THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


CERF  LIBRARY 

PRESENTED  BY 

REBECCA  CERF  '02 

IN  THE  NAMES  OF 

CHARLOTTE  CERF  '95 

MARCEL  E.  CERF  '97 

BARRY  CERF  '02 


^ 


*■•>* 


■%  *- 


*ti 


NEW  BIOGRAPHIES 


OF 


ILLUSTRIOUS   MEN. 


B  T 

MACATJLAY,  ROGERS,  MARTYN, 

AND    OTHERS. 


FROM  THE  EIGHTH  EDITION  OF  THE  ENCYCLOP/EDIA  BRITANNICA. 


BOSTON: 
J.    M.   WHITTEMORE    &    CO, 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congp*sg,  in  the  year  1857,  by 

WHITTEMORE,   NILES,   AND  HALL, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Jdassachusetts 


CAMBRIDGE : 

ALLBN    AND    FARKHAM,  BtlKXOTTPBBS    AND    PBINT15R8. 


CONTENTS. 


JOSEPH  ADDISON 1 

BT  wniJAM  BPAixusa. 

FRANCIS  ATTERBURY » 

BT   THOMAS   BABINGTOH   HACAUI^T. 

FRANCIS  BACON 87 

BT   WHiLIAM  SFAIJ)INa. 

JOSEPH  BUTLER '    61 

BT   BSKBT  BOGKBS. 

JOHN  HOWARD   / 85 

BT  HSFWOBTH  DIZOH. 

JOHN  BUNYAN  . 106 

BT  THOMAS   BABIHGTOH  UAOAUZiAT. 

HORACE 128 

BT  THEODOBK  MABTIK. 

ROBERT  HALL  .        .       .       .  *    .       .       .       .        .       .144 

BT   HEKTKT    BOGKBS. 

(iii) 


Si57G890 


iv  CONTENTS. 

SCR  JOHN  FRANKLIN W6 

BT  SIB  JOHN   BICHABDSON. 

HOMER .       •       •    186 

BT   JOHN    STUAKT   BLACKIB.  "^^ 

OUVER  GOLDSMITH 224 

BY  THOMAS  BABINGTON  MAOAUIiAT. 

EDWARD  GIBBON    ..........    242 

BT   HENBT   BOOESS. 

GASSENDI 289 

BT  HENBT  BOOEB8. 

JAMES  CRICHTON 805 

BT   DAVID   IBVINO. 

SAMUEL  JOHNSON 819 

BY   THOMAS   BABINGTON  MAOAULAT. 

SIR  HUMPHRY  DAVY 861 

BT  JAMES  DAVID  FOBBES. 

DAVID  HUME 8T9 

BT  HENBT  B0OEB8. 


NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 


JOSEPH  ADDISON. 

Joseph  Addison  was  the  eldest  son  of  Dean  Addison. 
He  was  born  at  his  father's  rectory  of  Milston  in  "Wiltshire, 
on  the  first  day  of  May,  1672.  After  having  passed  through 
several  schools,  the  last  of  which  was  the  Charter-house,  he 
went  to  Oxford,  when  he  was  about  fifteen  yeare  old.  He 
was  first  entered  of  Queen's  College,  but  after  two  years 
was  elected  a  scholar  of  Magdalen  College,  having,  it  is 
said,  been  recommended  by  his  skill  in  Latin  versification. 
He  took  his  master's  degree  in  1693,  and  held  a  fellowship 
from  1699  to  1711. 

The  eleven  years  extending  from  1693,  or  his  twenty- 
first  year,  to  1704,  when  he  was  in  his  thirty-second,  may  be 
set  down  as  the  first  stage  of  his  life  as  a  man  of  letters. 
During  this  period,  embracing  no  profession,  and  not  as  yet 
entangled  in  official  business,  he  was  a  student,  an  observer, 
and  an  author  ;  and  though  the  literary  works  which  he  then 
produced  are  not  those  on  which  his  permanent  celebrity 
rests,  they  gained  for  him  in  his  own  day  a  high  reputation. 
He  had  at  first  intended  to  become  a  clergyman ;  but  his 
talents  having  attracted  the  attention  of  leading  statesmen 
belonging  to  the  Whig  party,  he  was  speedily  diverted  from 

1  (1) 


2  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

his  earlier  views  by  the  countenance  which  these  men  be- 
stowed on  him.  His  first  patron  (to  whom  he  seems  to 
have  been  introduced  by  Congreve)  was  Charles  Montague, 
afterwards  Earl  of  Halifax,  who  was  himself  a  dabbler  in 
literature,  and  a  protector  of  literary  men ;  and  he  became 
known  afterwards  to  the  accomplished  and  excellent  Somers. 
While  both  of  them  were  quite  able  to  estimate  justly  his 
literary  merits,  they  had  regard  mainly  to  the  services  which 
they  believed  him  capable  of  rendering  to  the  nation  or  the 
party  ;  and  accordingly  they  encouraged  him  to  regulate  his 
pursuits  Avith  a  view  to  public  and  official  employment. 
For  a  considerable  time,  however,  he  was  left  to  his  own 
resources,  which  cannot  have  been  otherwise  than  scanty. 

His  first  literary  efforts  were  poetical.  In  1G93,  a  short 
poem  of  his,  addressed  to  Dryden,  was  inserted  in  the  third 
volume  of  that  veteran  writer's  Miscellanies.  The  next 
volume  of  this  collection  contained  his  translation,  in  tolerable 
heroic  couplets,  of  "  all  Virgil's  Foui-th  Georgic,  except  the 
story  of  Aristaeus."  Two  and  a  half  books  of  Ovid  were 
afterwards  attempted;  and  to  his  years  of  early  manhood 
belonged  also  his  prose  Essay  on  VirgiVs  Georgics,  a  per- 
formance which  hardly  deserved,  either  for  its  style  or  for 
its  critical  excellence,  the  compliment  paid  it  by  Dryden,  in 
prefixing  it  to  his  own  translation  of  the  poem.  The  most 
ambitious  of  those  poetical  assay-pieces  is  the  "  Account  of 
the  Greatest  English  Poets,"  dated  April,  1G94,  and  ad- 
dressed affectionately  to  Sacheverell,  the  poet's  fellow  col- 
legian, who  afterwards  became  so  notorious  in  the  party 
quarrels  of  the  time.  This  piece,  spirited  both  in  language 
and  in  versification,  is  chiefly  noticeable  as  showing  that 
ignorance  of  old  English  poetry  which  was  then  universal. 
Addison  next,  in  1695,  published  one  of  those  compositions, 
celebrating  contemporary  events,  and  lauding  contemporary 
great  men,  on  which,  during  the  half  century  that  succeeded 
the  Revolution,  there  was  wasted  so  much  of  good  writing 


JOSEPH    ADDISON.  O 

and  of  fair  poetic  ability.  His  piece,  not  very  meritorious 
even  in  its  own  class,  was  addressed  "  To  the  King,"  and 
commemorates  the  campaign  which  was  distinguished  by 
William's  taking  of  Namur.  Much  better'  than  the  poem 
itself  are  the  introductory  verses  to  Somers,  then  lord 
keeper.  This  production,  perhaps  intended  as  a  remem- 
brancer to  the  writer's  patrons,  did  not  at  once  produce  any 
obvious  effect ;  and  we  are  left  in  considerable  uncertainty 
as  to  the  manner  in  which  about  this  time  Addison  contrived 
to  support  himself.  He  corresponded  with  Tonson  the 
bookseller  about  projected  works,  one  of  these  being  a 
Translation  of  Herodotus.  It  was  probably  at  some  later  time 
that  he  purposed  compiling  a  Dictionary  of  the  English 
Ian"-uage.  In  1699  a  considerable  collection  of  his  Latin 
verses  was  pubhshed  at  Oxford,  in  the  "  Musce  Anglicanae." 
These  appear  to  have  interested  some  foreign  scholars  ;  and 
several  of  them,  show  curious  symptoms  of  his  characteristic 
humor. 

In  the  same  year,  his  patrons,  either  having  still  no  office 
to  spare  for  him,  or  desiring  him  to  gain  peculiarly  high 
qualifications  for  diplomatic  or  other  important  business, 
provided  for  him  temporarily  by  a  grant,  which,  though  be- 
stowed on  a  man  of  great  merit  and  promise,  would  not  pass 
unquestioned  in  the  present  century.  He  obtained,  on  the 
recommendation  of  Lord  Somers,  a  pension  of  three  hundred 
pounds  a  year,  designed  (as  Addison  himself  afterwards  said 
in  a  memorial  addressed  to  the  crown)  to  enable  him  "  to 
'  travel,  and  otherwise  qualify  himself  to  serve  His  Majesty." 
In  the  summer  of  1699  he  crossed  into  France,  where,  chiefly 
for  the  purpose  of  learning  the  language,  he  remained  till 
the  end  of  1700  ;  and  after  this  he  spent  a  year  in  Italy. 
In  Switzerland,  on  his  way  home,  he  was  stopped  by  receiv- 
ing notice  that  he  was  to  be  appointed  envoy  to  Prince  Eu- 
gene, then  engaged  in  the  war  in  Italy.  But  his  Whig 
friends  were  already  tottering  in  their  places ;  and,  in  March, 


4  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

1702,  the  death  of  King  William  at  once  drove  them  from 
power  and  put  an  end  to  the  pension.  Indeed,  Addison  as- 
sei-ted  that  he  never  received  but  one  year's  payment  of  it, 
and  that  all  the  other  expenses  of  his  travels  were  defrayed 
by  himself.  He  was  able,  however,  to  visit  a  great  part  of 
Germany,  and  did  not  reach  Holland  till  the  spring  of  1703. 
His  prospects  were  now  sufficiently  gloomy ;  he  entered  into 
treaty,  often  er  than  once,  for  an  engagement  as  a  travelling 
tutor ;  and  the  correspondence  in  one  of  these  negotiations 
lias  been  preserved.  Tonson  had  recommended  him  as  the 
best  person  to  attend  in  this  character  the  son  of  the  Duke 
of  Somerset,  commonly  called  "  The  Proud."  The  Duke,  a 
profuse  man  in  matters  of  pomp,  was  economical  in  ques- 
tions of  education.  He  wished  Addison  to  name  the  salary 
he  expected ;  this  being  declined,  he  announced,  with  great 
dignity,  that  he  would  give  a  hundred  guineas  a  year ; 
Addison  accepted  the  munificent  offer,  saying,  however,  that 
he  could  not  find  his  account  in  it  otherwise  than  by  relying 
on  his  Grace's  future  patronage ;  and  his  Grace  immedi- 
ately intimated  that  he  would  look  out  for  some  one  else. 
Towards  the  end  of  1703  Addison  returned  to  England. 

Works  which  he  composed  during  his  residence  on  the 
continent,  were  the  earliest  that  showed  him  to  have  at- 
tained maturity  of  skill  and  genius.  There  is  good  reason 
for  believing  that  his  tragedy  of  Gato,  whatever  changes  it 
may  afterwards  have  suffered,  was  in  great  part  written 
while  he  lived  in  France,  that  is,  when  he  was  about  twenty- 
eight  years  of  age.  In  the  winter  of  1701,  amidst  the  stop* 
pages  and  discomforts  of  a  journey  across  the  Mount  Cenis, 
he  composed,  wholly  or  partly,  his  Letter  from  Italy,  which 
is  by  far  the  best  of  his  poems,  if  it  is  not  rather  the  only 
one  among  them  that  at  all  justifies  his  claim  to  the  poetical 
character.  It  contains  some  fine  touches  of  description,  and 
is  animated  by  a  noble  tone  of  classical  enthusiasm.  While 
in  Gcrmuny,  he  wrote  his  Dialogueson  Medals,  which,  how 


JOSEPH   ADDISON.  O 

ever,  were  not  published  till  after  his  death.  These  have 
much  liveliness  of  style,  and  something  of  the  gay  humor 
which  the  author  was  afterwards  to  exhibit  more  strongly ; 
but  they  show  little  either  of  antiquarian  learning  or  of  crit- 
ical ingenuity.  In  tracing  out  parallels  between  passages 
of  the  Roman  poets  and  figures  or  scenes  which  appear  in 
ancient  sculptures,  Addison  opened  the  easy  course  of  in- 
quiry which  was  afterwards  prosecuted  by  Spence ;  and 
this,  with  the  apparatus  of  spirited  metrical  translations  from 
the  classics,  gave  the  work  a  likeness  to  his  account  of  his 
travels.  This  account,  entitled  Remarks  on  Several  Parts  of 
Italy,  etc.,  he  sent  home'  for  publication  before  his  own 
return.  It  wants  altogether  the  interest  of  personal  narra- 
tive ;  the  author  hardly  ever  appears.  The  task  in  which 
he  chiefly  busies  himself  is  that  of  exhibiting  the  illustra- 
tions which  the  writings  of  the  Latin  poets,  and  the  antiqui- 
ties and  scenery  of  Italy,  mutually  give  and  receive.  Many 
of  the  landscapes  are  sketched  with  great  loveliness ;  and 
there  are  not  a  few  strokes  of  arch  humor.  The  statistical 
information  is  very  meagre  ;  nor  are  there  many  observa- 
tions on  society ;  and  politics  are  no  further  meddled  with 
than  to  show  the  moderate  liberality  of  the  writer's  own 
opinions. 

With  the  year  1704  begins  a  second  era  in  Addison's 
life,  which  extends  to  the  summer  of  1710,  when  his  age 
was  thirty-eight  This  was  the  first  term  of  his  official  ca- 
reer; and  though  very  barren  of  literary  performance,  it 
not  only  raised  him  from  indigence,  but  settled  definitely  his 
position  as  a  public  man.  His  correspondence  shows  that, 
while  on  the  Continent,  he  had  been  admitted  to  confidential 
intimacy  by  diplomatists  and  men  of  rank  :  immediately  on 
his  return  he  was  enrolled  in  the  Kitcat  Club,  and  brought 
thus  and  otherwise  into  communication  with  the  gentry  of 
the  Whig  party.  Although  all  accounts  agree  in  represent- 
ing him  as  a  shy  man,  he  was  at  least  saved  from  all  risk 

1* 


b  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

of  making  himself  disagreeable  in  society,  by  his  unassuming 
manners,  his  extreme  caution,  and  that  sedulous  desire  to 
oblige,  which  his  satirist  Pope  exaggerated  into  a  positive 
fault.  His  knowledge  and  ability  were  esteemed  so  highly, 
as  to  confii-m  the  expectations  formerly  entertained  of  his 
usefulness  in  public  business  ;  and  the  literary  fame  already 
acquired  soon  furnished  an  occasion  for  recommending  him 
to  public  employment.  Though  the  Whigs  were  out  of 
office,  the  administration  which  succeeded  them  was,  in  all 
its  earlier  changes,  of  a  complexion  so  mixed  and  uncertain, 
that  the  influence  of  their  leaders  was  not  entirely  lost.  Not 
long  after  Marlborough's  great  victory  at  Blenheim,  it  is 
said  that  Godolphin,  the  lord  treasurer,  expressed  to  Lord 
Halifax  a  desire  to  have  the  great  duke's  fame  extended  by 
a  poetical  tribute.  Halifax  seized  the  opportunity  of  rec- 
ommending Addison  as  the  fittest  man  for  the  duty ;  stipu- 
lating, we  are  told,  that  the  service  should  not  be  unre- 
warded, and  doubtless  satisfying  the  minister,  that  his  pro- 
teg*^  possessed  other  qualifications  for  office  besides  dexterity 
in  framing  heroic  verse.  The  Campaign,  the  poem  thus 
written  to  order,  was  received  with  extraordinary  applause ; 
and  it  is  probably  as  good  as  any  that  ever  was  prompted 
by  no  more  worthy  inspiration.  It  has  indeed  neither  the 
fiery  spirit  which  Dryden  threw  into  occasional  pieces  of  the 
sort,  nor  the  exquisite  polish  that  would  have  been  given  by 
Pope,  if  he  had  stooped  to  make  such  uses  of  his  genius : 
but  many  of  the  details  are  pleasing ;  and  in  the  famous 
passage  of  the  Angel,  as  well  as  in  several  others,  there  is 
even  something  of  force  and  imagination. 

The  consideration  covenanted  for  by  the  poet's  friends 
was  faithfully  paid.  A  vacancy  occurred  by  the  death  of 
another  celebrated  man,  John  Locke ;  and  in  November, 
17G4,  Addison  was  appointed  one  of  the  five  commissioners 
of  appeal  in  Excise.  The  duties  of  the  place  must  have 
been  as  light  for  him  as  they  had  been  for  his  predecessor; 


JOSEPH    ADDISON.  / 

for  he  continued  to  hold  it  with  all  the  appointments  he 
subsequently  received  from  the  same  ministry.  But  there 
is  no  reason  for  believing  that  he  was  more  cai-eless  than 
other  j)ublic  servants  in  his  time ;  and  the  charge  of  incom- 
petency as  a  man  of  business,  which  has  been  brought  so 
positively  against  him,  cannot  possibly  be  true  as  to  this  first 
period  of  his  official  career.  Indeed  the  specific  allegations 
refer  exclusively  to  the  last  years  of  his  life ;  and,  if  he  had 
not  really  shown  practical  ability  in  the  period  now  in  ques- 
tion, it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  he,  a  man  destitute  alike  of 
wealth,  of  social  or  fashionable  liveliness,  and  of  family  in- 
terest, could  have  been  promoted,  for  several  years,  from 
office  to  office,  as  he  was,  till  the  fall  of  the  administration  to 
which  he  was  attached.  In  170G,  he  became  one  of  the 
under-secretaries  of  state,  serving  first  under  Hedges,  who 
belonged  to  the  Tory  section  of  the  government,  and  after- 
wards under  Lord  Sunderland,  Marlborough's  son-in-law,  and 
a  zealous  follower  of  Addison's  early  patron,  Somers.  The 
work  of  this  office  however,  like  that  of  the  comraissionership, 
must  often  have  admitted  of  performance  by  deputy.  For 
in  1707,  the  Whigs  having  become  stronger,  Lord  Halifax 
was  sent  on  a  mission  to  ^e  Elector  of  Hanover ;  and, 
besides  taking  Vanbrugh  the  dramatist  with  him  as  king-at 
arms,  he  selected  Addison  as  his  secretary.  In  1708,  ho 
entered  parliament,  sitting  at  first  for  Lostwithiel,  but  after 
wards  for  Malmesbury,  which,  being  six  times  elected,  he 
represented  from  1710  till  his  death.  Here  unquestionably 
he  did  fail.  What  part  he  may  have  taken  in  the  details  of 
business  we  are  not  informed ;  but  he  was  always  a  silent 
member,  unless  it  be  true  that  he  once  ^Tttempted  to  speak 
and  sat  down  in  confusion.  In  1709,  Lord  Wharton,  the 
fiither  of  the  notorious  duke,  having  been  named  Lord-Lieu- 
tenant of  Ireland,  Addison  became  his  secretary,  receiving 
also  an  appointment  as  keeper  of  records.  This  event  hap- 
pened only  about  a  year  and  a  half  before  the  dismissal  of 


8  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  ministry  ;  and  the  Irish  secretary  would  seem  to  have 
transacted  the  business  of  his  office  chiefly  in  London.  But 
there  are  letters  showing  him  to  have  made  himself  ac- 
ceptable to  some  of  the  best  and  most  distinguished  persons 
in  Dublin  ;  and  he  escaped  without  having  any  quarrel  with 
Swift,  his  acquaintance  with  whom  had  begun  some  time 
before.  In  the  literary  history  of  Addison,  those  seven 
years  of  official  service  are  almost  a  blank,  till  we  approach 
their  close.  He  defended  the  government  in  an  anonymous 
pamphlet  on  The  Present  State  of  the  War  ;  he  united  com- 
pliments to  the  all-powerful  Marlborough,  with  indiffisrent 
attempts  at  lyrical  poetry  in  his  opera  of  Rosamond ;  and, 
besides  furnishing  a  prologue  to  Steele's  comedy  of  The 
Tender  Husband,  he  perhaps  gave  some  assistance  in  the 
composition  of  the  play.  •Irish  administration,  however, 
allowed,  it  would  seem,  more  leisure  than  might  have  been 
expected.  During  the  last  few  months  of  his  tenure  of 
office,  Addison  contributed  largely  to  the  Tatler.  But  his 
entrance  on  this  new  field  does  nearly  coincide  with  the 
beginning  of  a  new  section  in  his  history. 

Even  the  coalition  ministry  of  Godolphin  was  too  whig- 
^sh  for  the  taste  of  Queen  Anne  ;  and  the  tories,  the  favor- 
ites of  the  court,  gained,  both  in  parliamentary  power  and 
in  popularity  out  of  doors,  by  a  combination  of  lucky  acci- 
dents, dexterous  management,  and  divisions  and  double- 
dealing  among  their  adversaries.  The  real  failure  of  the 
prosecution  of  Addison's  old  friend,  Sacheverell,  completed 
the  ruin  of  the  whigs;  and  in  August,  1710,  an  entire  revo- 
lution in  the  ministry  had  been  completed.  The  tory  admin- 
istration, which  succeeded,  kept  its  place  till  the  queen's 
death  in  1714;  and  Addison  was  thus  left  to  devote  four  of 
the  best  years  of  his  life,  from  his  thirty-ninth  year  to  his 
forty-third,  to  occupations  less  lucrative  than  those  in  which 
his  time  had  recently  been  frittered  away,  but  much  more  con- 
ducive to  the  extension  of  his  own  fame,  and  to  the  benefit  of 


JOSEPH   ADDISON.  if 

English  Kterature.  Although  our  information  as  to  his  pecun- 
iary affairs  is  very  scanty,  we  are  entitled  to  believe  that  he 
was  now  independent  of  literary  labor.  He  speak?,  in  an 
extant  paper,  of  having  had  (but  lost)  property  in  the  "West 
Indies;  and  he  is  understood  to  haye  inherited  several 
thousand  pounds  from  a  younger  brother,  who  was  governor 
of  Madras.  In  1711,  he  purchased  for  ten  thousand  pounds, 
the  estate  of  Bilton,  near  Eugby ;  the  same  place  which,  in 
our  own  day,  became  the  residence  of  Mr.  Apperley,  better 
known  by  the  assumed  name  of  "  Nimrod." 

During  those  four  years  he  produced  a  few  political  writ- 
ings. Soon  after  the  fall  of  the  ministry,  he  contributed 
five  numbers  to  The  Whig  Examiner,  a  paper  set  up  in 
opposition  to  the  tory  periodical  of  the  same  name,  which 
was  then  conducted  by  the  poet.  Prior,  and  afterwards 
became  the  vehicle  of  Swift's  most  vehement  invectives 
against  the  party  he  had  once  belonged  to.  These  are  cer- 
tainly the  most  ill-natured  of  Addison's  writings ;  but  they 
are  neither  lively  nor  vigorous.  There  is  more  spirit  in  his 
allegorical  pamphlet.  The  Trial  and  Conviction  of  Count 
Tariff. 

But  from  the  autumn  of  1710  till  the  end  of  1714,  his 
principal  employment  was  the  composition  .of  his  celebrated 
Periodical  Essays.  The  honor  of  inventing  the  plan  of 
such  compositions,  as  well  as  that  of  first  carrying  the  idea 
into  execution,  belongs  to  Richard  Steele,  who  had  been  a 
schoolfellow  of  Addison  at  the  Charter-house,  continued  to 
be  on  intimate  terms  with  him  afterwards,  and  attached  him- 
self with  his  characteristic  ardor  to  the  same  political  party. 
When,  in  April,  1709,  Steele  pubHshed  the  first  number  of 
the  Tatler,  Addison  was  in  Dublin,  and  knew  nothing  of  the 
design.  He  is  said  to  have  detected  his  friend's  authorship 
only  by  recognizing  in  one  of  the  early  papers,  a  critical 
remark  which  he  remembered  having  himself  communicated 
to   Steele.     He  began  to  furnish  essays  in  a  few  weeks 


10  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

assisted  occasionally  while  he  held  office,  and  afterwards 
wrote  oftener  than  Steele  himself.  He  thus  contributed  in 
all,  if  his  literary  executor  selected  his  contributions  cor- 
rectly, more  than  sixty  of  the  two  hundred  and  seventy-one 
essays  which  the  \\9i'k  contains.  The  Tatler  exhibited,  in 
more  ways  than  one,  symptoms  of  being  an  experiment. 
The  projector,  imitating  the  news-sheets  in  form,  thought  it 
prudent  to  give,  in  each  number,  news  in  addition  to  the 
essay ;  and  there  was  a  want,  both  of  unity  and  correct 
finishing,  in  the  putting  together  of  the  literary  materials. 
Addison's  contributions,  in  particular,  are  in  many  places  as 
lively  as  any  thing  he  ever  wrote ;  and  his  style,  in  its  more 
familiar  moods  at  least,  had  been  fully  formed  before  he 
returned  from  the  Continent.  But,  as  compared  with  his 
later  pieces,  these  are  only  what  the  paintei^s  loose  studies 
and  sketches  are  to  the  landscapes  which  he  afterwards  con- 
structs out  of  them.  In  his  inventions  of  incidents  and 
characters,  one  thought  after  another  is  hastily  used  and 
hastily  dismissed,  as  if  he  were  putting  his  own  powers  to 
the  test,  or  trying  the  effect  of  various  kinds  of  objects  on 
his  readers ;  his  most  ambitious  flights,  in  the  shape  of  alle- 
gories and  the  like,  are  stiff  and  inanimate  ;  and  his  favorite 
field  of  literary  criticism  is  touched  so  slightly,  as  to  show 
that  he  still  wanted  confidence  in  the  taste  and  knowledge 
of  the  public. 

The  Ihtler  was  dropped  at  the  beginning  of  1711 ;  but 
only  to  be  followed  by  the  Spectator,  which  was  begun  on 
the  first  day  of  March,  and  appeared  eveiy  weekday  till 
the  6th  day  of  December,  1712.  It  had  then  completed 
the  five  hundred  and  fifty-five  numbers  usually  collected  in 
its  first  seven  volumes.  Addison,  now  in  London  and 
unemployed,  cooperated  with  Steele  constantly  from  the 
very  opening  of  the  series ;  and  the  two  contributing 
almost  equally,  seem  together  to  have  written  not  very 
much  less  than  five  hundred  of  the  papers.     Emboldened 


JOSEPH  ADDISON.  11 

,  by  the  syccess  of  their  former  adventure,  they  devoted  their 
whole  space  to  the  essays.  They  relied,  with  a  confidence 
which  the  extraordinary  popularity  of  the  work  fully  justi- 
fied, on  their  power  of  exciting  the  interest  of  a  wide  audi- 
ence by  pictures  and  reflections  drawn  from  a  field  which 
embraced  the  whole  compass  of  ordinary  life  and  ordinary 
knowledge  ;  no  kind  of  practical  themes  being  positively 
excluded  except  such  as  were  political,  and  all  literary  top- 
ics being  held  admissible,  for  which  it  seemed  possible  to 
command  attention  from  persons  of  average  taste  and 
information.  A  seeming  unity  was  given  to  the  undertak- 
ing, and  curiosity  and  interest  awakened  on  behalf  of  the 
conductors,  by  the  happy  invention  of  the  Spectator's  Club, 
in  which  Steele  is  believed  to  have  drawn  all  the  characters. 
The  figure  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  however,  the  best  even 
in  the  opeffing  group,  is  the  only  one  that  was  afterwards 
elaborately  depicted  ;  and  Addison  was  the  author  of  all  the 
papers  in  which  his  oddities  and  amiabilities  are  so  admira- 
bly delineated.  To  him,  also,  the  Spectator  owed  a  very 
large  share  of  its  highest  excellences.  His  were  many, 
and  these  the  most  natural  and  elegant,  if  not  the  most 
original,  of  its  humorous  sketches  of  human  character  and 
social  eccentricities,  its  good-humored  satires  on  ridiculous 
features  in  manners,  and  on  corrupt  symptoms  in  public 
taste ;  these  topics,  however,  making  up  a  department  in 
which  Steele  was  fairly  on  a  level  with  his  more  famous 
coadjutor.  But  Steele  had  neither  learning,  nor  taste,  nor 
critical  acuteness,  sufficient  to  qualify  him  for  enriching  the 
series  with  such  literary  disquisitions,  as  those  which  Addi- 
son insinuated  so  often  into  the  lighter  matter  of  his  essays, 
and  of  which  he  gave  an  elaborate  specimen  in  his  cele- 
brated and  agreeable  criticism  on  Paradise  Lost.  Still 
further  beyond  the  powers  of  Steele  were  those  specula- 
tions on  the  theory  of  literature  and  of  the  processes  of 
thought  analogous  to  it,  which,  in  the  essays  On  the  Pleas- 


12  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ures  of  the  Imagination,  Addison  prosecuted,  not,  indeed, 
with  much  of  philosophical  depth,  but  with  a  sagacity  and 
comprehensiveness  which  we  shall  undervalue  much,  unless 
we  remember  how  little  of  philosophy  was  to  be  found  in 
any  critical  views  previously  propounded  in  England.     To 
Addison,  further,  belong  those  essays  which  (most  frequently 
introduced  in  regular  alternation  in  the  papers  of  Saturday) 
rise  into  the  region  of  moral  and  religious  meditation,  and 
tread  the  elevated  ground  with  a  step  so  graceful  as  to  allure 
the  reader  irresistibly  to  follow ;  sometimes,  as  in  the  Walk 
through   Westminster  Ahhey,  enlivening  solemn  thought  by 
gentle  sportiveness ;  sometimes  flowing  on  with  an  uninter- 
rupted sedateness  of   didactic  eloquence  ;    and   sometimes 
shrouding  sacred  truths  in  the  veil  of  ingenious  allegory,  as 
in  the  majestic  Vision  of  Mirza.     While,  in  a  word,  the 
Spectator,  if  Addison  had  not  taken  part  in  it,  would  proba- 
bly have  been  as  lively  and  humorous  as  it  was,  and  not  less 
popular  in  its  own  day,  it  would  have  wanted  some  of  its 
strongest  claims  on  the  respect  of  posterity,  by  being  at 
once  lower  in  its  moral  tone,  far  less  abundant  in  literary 
knowledge,  and  much  less  vigorous  and  expanded  in  think- 
ing.    In   point  of  style,   again,   the  two  friends  resemble 
each  other  so  closely  as  to  be  hardly  distinguishable,  when 
both  are  dealing  with  familiar  objects,  and  w^riting  in  a  key 
not  rising  above  that  of  conversation.     But,  in  the  higher 
tones  of  thought  and  composition,  Addison  showed  a  mas- 
tery of  language  raising  him   very  decisively,  not  above 
Steele  only,  but  above  all  his  contemporaries.     Indeed,  it 
may  safely  be  said,  that  no  one,  in  any  age  of  our  litera- 
ture, has  united,  so  strikingly  as  he  did,  the  colloquial  grace 
and  ease  which  mark  the  style  of  an  accomplished  gentle- 
man, with  the  power  of  soaring  into  a  strain  of  expression 
noble  and  eloquently  dignified. 

On  the  cessation  of  the  Spectator,  Steele  set  on  foot  the 
Guardian,  which,  started  in  March,  1713,  came  to  an  end  in 


JOSEPH    ADDISON.  13 

October,  with  its  one  hundred  and  seventy-fifth  number. 
To  this  series  Addison  gave  fifty-three  papers,  being  a  very 
frequent  writer  during  the  latter  half  of  its  progress.  None 
of  his  essays  here  aifn  so  high  as  the  best  of  those  in  the 
Spectator  ;  but  he  often  exhibits  both  his  cheerful  and  well- 
balanced  humor,  and  his  earnest  desire  to  inculcate  sound 
principles  of  literary  judgment.  In  the  last  six  months  of 
the  year  1714,  the  Spectator  reached  its  eighth  and  last  vol- 
ume ;  for  which  Steele  appears  not  to  have  written  at  all, 
and  Addison  to  have  contributed  twenty-four  of  the  eighty 
papers.  Most  of  these  form,  in  the  unbroken  seriousness 
both  of  their  topics  and  of  their  manner,  a  contrast  to  the  ma- 
jority of  his  essays  in  the  earlier  volumes  ;  but  several  of 
them,  both  in  this  vein  and  in  one  less  lofty,  are  among  the 
best  known,  if  not  the  finest  of  all  his  essays.  Such  are  the 
Mountain  of  Miseries  ;  the  antediluvian  novel  of  Shallum 
and  liilpa  ;  the  Reflections  hy  Moonlight  on  the  Divine  Per- 
fections. • 

In  April,  1713,  Addison  brouglit  on  the  stage,  very  reluc- 
tantly, as  we  are  assured,  and  can  easily  believe,  his  tragedy 
of  Cato.  Its  success  was  dazzling  :  but  this  issue  was  mainly 
owing  to  the  concern  which  the  politicians  took  in  the  exhi- 
bition. The  Whigs  hailed  it  as  a  brilliant  manifesto  in  fa- 
vor of  constitutional  freedom.  The  Tories  echoed  the  ap- 
plause, to  show  themselves  enemies  of  despotism,  and  pro- 
fessed to  find  in  Julius  Ca;sar  a  parallel  to  the  formidable 
Marlborough.  Even  with  such  extrinsic  aids,  and  the 
advantage  derived  from  the  estabhshed  fame  of  the  author, 
Cato  could  never  have  been  esteemed  a  good  dramatic  work, 
unless  in  an  age  in  which  dramatic  power  and  insight  were 
almost  extinct.  It  is  poor  even  in  its  poetical  elements,  and 
is  redeemed  only  by  the  finely  solemn  tone  of  its  moral 
reflections,  and  the  singular  refinement  and  equable  smooth- 
ness of  its  diction. 

The  literary  career  of  Addison  might  almost  be  held  as 
2 


14  -  1*EW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

closed  soon  after  the  death  of  Queen  Anne,  Avhich  occurred 
in  August,  1714,  when  he  had  lately  completed  his  forty- 
second  year.  His  own  life  extended  only  five  years  loitger ; 
and  this  closing  portion  of  it  offers  little  that  is  pleasing  or  in- 
structive. We  see  hira  attaining  the  sumrait  of  his  ambition, 
only  to  totter  for  a  little  and  sink  into  an  early  grave.  We 
are  reminded  of  his  more  vigorous  days  by  nothing  but  a 
few  happy  inventions  interspersed  in  political  pamphlets, 
and  the  gay  fancy  of  a  trifling  poem  on  Kneller's  portrait 
of  George  I. 

The  Lord  Justices  who,  previously  chosen  secretly  by  the 
Elector  of  Hanover,  assumed  the  government  on  the  Queen's 
demise,  were,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  leading  Whigs. 
They  appointed  Addison  to  act  as  their  secretary.  He  next 
held,  for  a  very  short  time,  his  former  office  under  the  Irish 
Lord-Lieutenant ;  and,  early  in  1715,  he  was  made  one  of 
the  Lords  of  Trade.  In  the  course  of  the  same  year  oc- 
curred the  first  of  the  only  two  quarrels  with  friends,  into 
which  the  prudent,  good  tempered,  and  modest  Addison  is 
said  to  have  ever  been  betrayed.  His  adversary  on  this 
occasion  was  Pope,  who,  only  three  years  before,  had  re- 
ceived, with  an  appearance  of  humble  thankfulness,  Addi- 
son's friendly  remarks  on  his  Essay  on  Criticism  ;  but  who, 
though  still  very  young,  was  already  very  famous,  and 
beginning  to  show  incessantly  his  literary  jealousies,  and 
his  personal  and  party  hatreds.  Several  little  misunder- 
standings had  paved  the  way  for  a  breach,  when,  at  the  same 
time  with  the  first  volume  of  Pope's  Iliad,  there  appeared 
a  translation  of  the  first  book  of  the  poem,  bearing  the  name 
of  Thomas  Tickell.  Tickell  in  his  preface,  disclaimed  all 
rivalry  with  Pope,  and  declared  that  he  wished  only  to  be- 
speak favorable  attention  for  his  contemplated  version  of  the 
Odyssey.  But  the  simultaneous  publication  was  a^vkward  ; 
and  Tickell,  though  not  so  good  a  versifier  as  Pope,  was  a 
dangerous  rival,  as  being  a  good-  Greek  scholar.     Further, 


JOSEt»H   ADDISON.  15 

he  was  Addison's  under-secretary  and  confidential  friend  ; 
and  Addison,  cautious  though  he  was,  does  appear  to 
have  said,  quite  truly,  that  Tickell's  translation  was  more 
faithful  than  the  other."  Pope's  anger  could  not  be  re- 
strained. He  wrote  those  famous  lines  in  which  he  de- 
scribes Addison  under  the  name  of  Atticus ;  and,  as  if  to 
make  reconciliation  impossible,  he.  not  only  circulated  these 
among  his  friends,  but  sent  a  copy  to  Addison  himself. 
Afterwards,  he  went  so  far  as  to  profess  a  belief  that  the 
rival  translation  was  really  Addison's  own.  It  is  pleasant 
to  observe  that,  after  the  insult  had  been  perpetrated,  Addi- 
son was  at  the  pains,  in  his  Freeholder,  to  express  hearty 
approbation  of  the  Iliad  of  Pope  :  who,  on  the  contrary, 
after  Addison's  death,  deliberately  printed  the  striking  but 
malignant  lines  in  the  epistle  to  Dr.  Arbuthnot.  In 
1715,  there  was  acted,  with  little  success,  the  comedy  of 
The  Drummer,  or  the  Haunted  House,  which,  though  it  ap- 
peared under  the  name  of  Steele,  was  certainly  not  his,  and 
was  probably  written  in  whole  or  chiefly  by  Addison.  It 
contributes  very  little  to  his  fame.  From  September  1715, 
to  June  1716,  he  defended  the  Hanoverian  succession,  and 
the  proceedings  of  the  government  in  regard  to  the  rebellion, 
in  a  paper  called  The  Freeholder,  which  he  wrote  entirely 
himself,  dropping  it  with  the  fifty-fifth  number.  It  is  much 
better  tempered,  not  less  spirited,  and  much  more  able  in 
thinking,  than  his  Examiner.  The  finical  man  of  taste  does 
indeed  show  himself  to  be  sometimes  weary  of  discussing 
constitutional  questions ;  but  he  aims  many  enlivening 
thrusts  at  weak  points  of  social  life  and  manners ;  and 
the  character  of  the  fox-hunting  Squire,  who  is  introduced 
as  the  representative  of  the  Jacobites,  is  drawn  with  so  much 
humor  and  force  that  we  regret  not  being  allowed  to  sec 
more  of  him. 

In  August,  1716,  when  he  completed  his  forty-fourth  year, 
Addison   married   the   Countess    Dowaerer   of  Warwick,  a 


16  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

widow  of  fifteen  years'  standing.  She  seeras  to  have  for- 
feited her  jointure  by  the  marriage,  and  to  have  brought  her 
husband  nothing  but  the  occupancy  of  the  Holland  House 
at  Kensin*ton.  We  know  hardly  any  thing  positively  in 
regard  to  the  affair,  or  as  to  the  origin  or  duration  of  his 
acquaintance  with  the  lady  or  her  family.  But  the  current 
assertion  that  the  courtship  was  a  long  one,  is  very  probably 
erroneous.  There  are  better  grounds  for  believing  the  as- 
sertion, transmitted  from  Addison's  own  time,  that  tlic  mar- 
riage was  unhappy.  The  Countess  is  said  to  have  been 
proud  as  well  as  violent,  and  to  have  supposed  that,  in  con- 
tracting the  alliance,  she  conferred  honor  instead  of  receiv- 
ing it.  To  the  uneasiness  caused  by  domestic  discomfort, 
the  most  friendly  critics  of  Addison's  character  have  attrib- 
uted those  habits  of  intemperance,  which  are  said  to  have 
grown  on  him  in  his  later  years  to  such  an  extent  as  to  have 
broken  his  health  and  accelerated  his  death.  His  most  re- 
cent biographer,  who  disbelieves  his  alleged  want  of  matri- 
monial quiet,  has  called  in  question,  with  much  ingenuity,  the 
whole  story  of  his  sottishness ;  and  it  must  at  any  rate  be 
allowed,  that  all  the  assertions  which  tend  to  fix  such  charges 
on  .him  in  the  earlier  parts  of  his  life,  rest  on  no  evidence 
that  is  wortliy  of  credit,  and  are  in  themselves  highly  im- 
probable. Sobriety  was  not  the  virtue  of  the  day ;  and  the 
constant  frequenting  of  coffee-houses,  which  figures  so  often 
in  the  Spectator  and  elsewhere,  and  which  v/as  really  prac- 
tised among  literary  men  as  well  as  others,  cannot  have 
had  good  effects.  Addison,  however,  really  appears  to  have 
had  no  genuine  relish  for  this  mode  of  life ;  and  there  are 
curious  notices,  especially  in  Steele's  correspondence,  of  his 
having  lodgings  out  of  town,  to  which  he  retired  for  study 
and  composition.  But  whatever  the  cause  may  have  been, 
his  health  was  shattered  before  he  took  that  which  was  the 
last,  and  certainly  the  most  unwise  step,  in  his  ascent  to  po- 
litical power. 


JOSEPH   ADDISON.  17 

Foi*  a  considerable  time  dissensions  had  existed  in  the 
ministry ;  and  these  came  to  a  crisis  in  April,  1717,  when 
those  who  had  been  the  real  chiefs,  passed  into  the  ranks  of 
opposition.  Townshend  was  dismissed  ;  and  Walpole  antici- 
pated dismissiod  by  resignation.  There  was  now  formed, 
under  the  leadership  of  General  Stanhope  and  Lord  Sun- 
derland, an  administration  which,  as  resting  on  court  influ- 
ence, was  nicknamed  the  "  German  ministry."  Sunderland, 
Addison's  former  superior,  became  one  of  the  two  principal 
secretaries  of  state,  and  Addison  himself  was  appointed  as 
the  other.  His  elevation  to  such  a  post  had  been  contem- 
plated on  the  accession  of  George  I.,  and  prevented,  we  are 
told,  by  his  own  refusal ;  and  it  is  asserted,  on  the  authority 
of  Pope,  that  his  acceptance  now  was  owing  only  to  the  in- 
fluence of  his  wife.  Even  if  there  is  no  ground,  as  there 
probably  is  not,  for  the  allegation  of  Addison's  inefficiency  in 
the  details  of  business,  his  unfitness  for  such  an  oflSce  in  such 
circumstances  was  undeniable  and  glaring.  It  was  impos- 
sible that  a  government,  whose  secretary  of  state  could  not 
open  his  lips  in  debate,  should  long  face  an  opposition  headed 
by  Robert  Walpole.  The  decay  of  Addison's  health,  too, 
was  going  on  rapidly ;  being,  we  may  readily  conjecture, 
precipitated  by  anxietyj  if  no  worse  causes  were  at  work. 
Ill  health  was  the  reason  assigned  for  retirement,  in  the 
letter  of  resignation  which  he  laid  before  the  King  in  March* 
1718,  eleven  months  after  his  appointment.  He  received  a 
pension  of  fifteen  hundred  pounds  a  year. 

Not  long  afterwards,  the  divisions  in  the  Whig  party 
alienated  him  from  his  oldest  friend.  The  Peerage  bill,  in- 
troduced in  February,  1719,  was  attacked,  on  behalf  of  the 
ojiposition,  in  a  weekly  paper,  which  was  called  the  Plebeian, 
and  written  by  Steele.  Addison  answered  it  temperately 
enough  in  the  Old  Whig ;  provocation  from  the  Plebeian 
brought  forth  angry  retort  from  the  Whig ;  Steele  cliarged 
Addison  with  being  so  old  a  whig  as  to  have  forgotten  his 
2* 


18^  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

principles ;  and  Addison  sneered  at  Grub  Street,  and  called 
his  friend  "  little  Dickey."  How  Addison  felt  after  this  pain- 
ful quarrel  we  are  not  told  directly ;  but  the  Old  Whig  was 
excluded  from  that  posthumous  collection  of  his  works,  for 
which  his  executor  Tickell  had  received  from  him  authority 
and  directions.  In  that  collection  was  inserted  a  treatise  on 
the  evidences  of  the  faith,  entitled  Of  the  Christian  Re- 
ligion. Its  theological  value  is  very  small ;  but  it  is  pleasant 
to  regard  it  as  the  last  effort  of  one  who,  amidst  all  weak- 
nesses, was  a  man  of  real  goodness  as  well  as  of  eminent 
genius. 

The  disease  under  which  Addison  labored  appears  to 
have  been  asthma.  It  became  more  violent  after  his  retire- 
ment from  office ;  and  was  now  accompanied  by  dropsy. 
His  death-bed  was  placid  and  resigned,  and  comforted  by 
those  religious  hopes  which  he  had  so  often  suggested  to 
others,  and  the  value  of  which  he  is  said,  in  an  anecdote  of 
doubtful  authoi'ity,  to  have  now  inculcated  in  a  parting  in- 
terview with  his  step-son.  He  died  at  Holland  House,  on 
the  17th  day  of  June,  1719,  six  weeks  after  having  com- 
pleted his  forty-seventh  year.  His  body,  after  lying  in  state, 
was  interred  in  the  Poets'  corner  of  Westminster  Abbey. 

The  Biographia  Britannica  gives  an  elaborate  memoir  of 
him ;  particulars  are  well  collected  in  the  article  under  his 
name  in  the  Biographical  Dictionary  of  the  Society  for  the 
diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge  ;  and  a  good  many  new  ma- 
terials, especially  letters,  will  be  found  in  The  Life  of  Joseph 
Addison,  by  Lucy  Aiken,  1843. 


FRANCIS    ATTERBURY. 


Francis  Atterbuey,  a  man  who  holds  a  conspicuous 
flace  in  the  political,  ecclesiastical,  and  literary  history  of 
England,  was  boiui  in  the  year  1662,  at  Middleton,  in  Buck- 
inghamshire, a  parish  of  which  his  father  was  rector. 
Francis  was  educated  at  Westminster  School  and  carried 
thence  to  Christ  Church  a  stock'  of  learning  which,  though 
really  scanty,  he  through  life  exhibited  with  such  judicious 
ostentation  that  superficial  observers  believed  his  attain- 
ments to  be  immense.  At  Oxford,  his  part^,  his  taste,  his 
bold,  contemptuous,  and  imperious  spirit  soon  made  him  con- 
spicuous. Here  he  pubUshed  at  twenty,  his  first  work,  a 
translation  of  the  noble  poem  of  Absalom  and  Ahithopel 
into  Latin  verse.  Neither  the  style  nor  the  vei-sification  of 
the  young  scholar  was  that  of  the  Augustan  age.  In 
English  composition  he  succeeded  much  better.  In  1687 
he  distinguished  himself  among  many  able  men  who  wrote 
in  defence  of  the  Church  of  England,  then  persecuted  by 
James  II.,  and  calumniated  by  apostates  who  had  for  lucre 
quitted  her  communion.  Among  these  apostates  none  was 
more  active  and  malignant  than  Obadiah  Walker,  who  was 
master  of  University  College,  and  who  had  set  up  there 
under  the  royal  patronage,  a  press  for  printing  tracts  against 
the  established  religion.  In  one  of  these  tracts,  written  ap- 
parently by  Walker  himself,  many  aspersions  were  thrown 

(19) 


20  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

on  Martin  Luther.  Atterbury  undertook  to  defend  the 
great  Saxon  reformer  and  performed  that  task  in  a  manner 
singukirly  characteristic.  Whoever  examines  his  reply  to 
Walker  will  be  struck  by  the  contrast  between  the  feebleness 
of  those  parts  which  are  argumentative  and  defensive,  and 
the  vigor  of  those  parts  which  are  rhetorical  and  aggressive. 
The  Papists  were  so  much  galled  by  the  sarcasms  and  in- 
vectives of  the  young  polemic,  that  they  raised  the  cry  of 
treason,  and  accused  him  of  having,  by  implication,  called 
King  James  a  Judas. 

After  the  Revolution,  Atterbury,  though  bred  in  the  doc- 
trines of  non-resistance  and  passive  obedience,  readily  swore 
fealty  to  the  new  government.  In  no  long  time  he  took 
holy  orders.  He  occasionally  preached  in  London  with  an 
eloquence  which  raised  his  reputation,  and  soon  had  the 
honor  of  being  appointed  one  of  the  royal  chaplains.  But 
he  ordinarily  resided  at  Oxford,  where  he  took  an  active 
part  in  academical  business,  directed  the  classical  studies  of 
the  undergraduates  of  his  college,  and  was  the  chief  adviser 
and  assistant  of  Dean  Aldrich,  a  divine  now  chiefly  remem- 
bered by  his  catches,  but  renowned  among  his  contempo- 
raries as  a  scholar,  a  Tory,  and  a  high-church  man.  It  was 
the  practice,  not  a  very  judicious  practice,  of  Aldrich,  to 
employ  the  most  promising  youths  of  his  college  in  editing 
Greek  and  Latin  books.  Among  the  studious  and  well- 
disposed  lads  who  were,  unfortunately  for  themselves,  in- 
duced to  become  teachers  of  philology  when  they  should 
have  been  content  to  be  learners,  was  Charles  Boyle,  son  of 
the  Earl  of  Orrery,  and  nephew  of  Robert  Boyle,  the  great 
experimental  philosopher.  The  task  assigned  to  Charles 
Boyle  was  to  prepare  a  new  edition  of  one  of  the  most 
worthless  books  in  existence.  It  was  a  fashion  among  those 
Greeks  and  Romans  who  cultivated  rhetoric  as  an  art,  to 
compose  epistles  and  harangues  in  the  names  of  eminent 
men.     Some  of  these  counterfeits  are  fabricated  with  such 


FBAKCIS   ATTERBURY.  21 

exquisite  taste  and  skill,  that  it  is  the  highest  achievement  of 
criticism  to  distinguish  them  from  originals.  Others  are  so 
feebly  and  rudely  executed  that  they  can  hardly  impose  on 
an  mtelligent  school-boy.  The  best  specimen  which  has 
come  down  to  us  is  perhaps  the  oration  for  Marcellus,  such 
an  imitation  of  TuUy's  eloquence  as  TuUy  would  himself 
have  read  with  wonder  and  deUght.  The  worst  specimen  is 
perhaps  a  collection  of  letters  purporting  to  have  been  writ- 
ten by  that  Phalaris  who  governed  Agrigentum  more  than 
500  years  before  the  Christian  Era.  The  evidence,  both 
internal  and  external,  against  the  genuineness  of  these  letters 
is  overwhelming.  When,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  they 
emerged^ in  company  with  much  that  was  far  more  valuable, 
from  their  obscurity,  they  were  pronounced  spurious  by 
Politian,  the  greatest  scholar  of  Italy,  and  by  Erasmus,  the 
greatest  scholar  on  our  side  of  the  Alps.  In  truth  it  would 
be  as  easy  to  persuade  an  educated  Englishman,  that  one  of 
Johnson's  Ramblers  was  the  work  of  AVilliam  Wallace,  as 
to  persuade  a  man  like  Erasmus,  that  a  pedantic  exercise, 
composed  in  the  trim  and  artificial  Attic  of  the  time  of  Julian, 
was  a  despatch  written  by  a  crafty  and  ferocious  Dorian 
who  roasted  people  alive  many  years  before  there  existed 
a  volume  of  prose  in  the  Greek  language.  But  though 
Christ  Church  could  boast  of  many  good  Latinists,  of  many 
good  English  writers,  and  of  a  greater  number  of  clever 
and  fashionable -men  of  the  world  than  belonged  to  any 
other  academic  body,  there  was  not  then  in  the  college  a 
single  man  capable  of  distinguishing  between  the  infancy 
and  the  dotage  of  Greek  literature.  So  superficial  indeed 
was  the  learning  of  the  rulers  of  this  celebrated  society, 
that  they  were  charmed  by  an  essay  which  Sir  William 
Temple  published  in  praise  of  the  ancient  writers.  It  now 
seems  strange  that  even  the  eminent  public  services,  the  de- 
served popularity,  and  the  graceful  style  of  Temple  should 
have  saved  so  silly  a  performance  from  universal  contempt. 


22  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

Of  the  books  which  he  most  vehemently  eulogized  his  eulo- 
gies proved  that  he  knew  nothing.  In  fact,  he  could  not 
read  a  line  of  the  language  in  which  they  were  written. 
Among  many  other  foolish  things,  he  said  that  the  letters  of 
Phalaris  were  the  oldest  letters  and  also  the  best  in  the 
world.  Whatever  Temple  wrote  attracted  notice.  People 
who  had  never  heard  of  the  Epistles  of  Phalaris  began  to 
inquire  about  them.  Aldrich,  who  kncAV  very  little  Greek, 
took  the  word  of  Temple  who  knew  none,  and  desired  Boyle 
to  prepare  a  new  edition  of  these  admirable  compositions 
which,  having  long  slept  in  obscurity,  had  become*  on  a  sud- 
den objects  of  general  interest. 

The  edition  was  prepared  with  the  help  of  Atterbury,  who 
was  Boyle's  tutor,  and  of  some  other  members  of  the  col- 
lege. It  was  an  edition  such  as  might  be  expected  from 
people  who  would  stoop  to  edit  such  a  book.  The  notes 
were  worthy  of  the  text ;  the  Latin  version  worthy  of 
the  Greek  original.  The  volume  would  have  been  forgotten 
in  a  month,  had  not  a  misunderstanding  about  a  manuscript 
arisen  between  the  young  editor  and  the  greatest  scholar 
that  had  appeared  in  Europe  since  the  revival  of  letters, 
Richard  Bentley.  The  manuscript  was  in  Bentley's  keep- 
ing. Boyle  wished  it  to  be  collated.  A  mischief-making 
bookseller  informed  him  that  Bentley  had  refused  to  lend  it, 
which  was  false,  and  also  that  Bentley  had  spoken  contempt- 
uously of  the  letters  attributed  to  Phalaris,  and  of  the  critics 
who  were  taken  in  by  such  counterfeits,  which  was  perfectly 
true.  Boyle,  much  provoked,  paid,  in  his  preface,  a  bitterly 
ironical  compliment  to  Bentley's  courtesy.  Bentley  re- 
venged himself  by  a  short  dissertation,  in  which  he  proved 
that  the  epistles  were  spurious,  and  the  new  edition  of  them 
worthless  :  but  lie  treated  Boyle  personally  with  civility  as 
a  young  gentleman  of  great  hopes,  whose  love  of  learning 
was  highly  commendable,  and  who  deserved  to  have  had 
better  instructors. 


FRANCIS    ATTERBURT.  23 

Few  things  in  literary  history  are  more  extraordinary 
than  the  storm  which  this  little  dissertation  raised.  Bentley 
had  treated  Boyle  with  forbearance ;  but  he  had  treated 
Christ  Church  with  contempt;  and  the  Christ  Churchmen, 
wherever  dispersed,  were  as  much  attached  to  their  college 
as  a  Scotchman  to  his  country  or  a  Jesuit  to  his  order. 
Their  influence  was  great.  They  were  dominant  at  Oxford, 
powerful  in  the  Inns  of  Court  and  in  the  College  of  Physi- 
cians, conspicuous  in  Parliament  and  in  the  literary  and 
fashionable  circles  of  London.  Their  unanimous  cry  was, 
that  the  honor  of  the  college  must  be  vindicated,  that  the 
insolent  Cambridge  pedant  must  be  put  down.  Poor  Boyle 
was  unequal  to  the  task  and  disinclined  to  it.  It  was  there- 
fore assigned  to  his  tutor,  Atterbury. 

The  answer  to  Bentley,  which  bears  the  name  of  Boyle, 
but  which  was,  in  truth,  no  more  the  work  of  Boyle  than 
the  letters  to  which  the  controversy  related  were  the  work  of 
Phalaris,  is  now  read  only  by  the  curious,  and  will  in  all 
probability  never  be  printed  again.  But  it  had  its  day  of 
noisy  popularity.  It  was  to  be  found  not  only  in  the  studies 
of  men  of  letters,  but  on  the  tables  of  the  most  brilliant 
drawing-rooms  of  Soho  Squai'e  and  Covent  Garden.  Even 
the  beaus  and  coquettes  of  that  age,  the  Wildairs  and  the 
Lady  Lurewells,  the  Mirabels,  and  the  Millamants,  con- 
gratulated each  other  on  the  way  in  which  the  gay  young 
gentleman,  whose  erudition  sat  so  easily  upon  him,  and  who 
Wrote  with  so  much  pleasantry  and  good  breeding  about  the 
Attic  dialect  and  the  anapaestic  measure,  Sicilian  talents  and 
Thericlean  cups,  had  bantered  the  queer  prig  of  a  doctor. 
Nor  was  the  applause  of  the  multitude  undeserved.  The 
book  is,  indeed,  Atterbury's  masterpiece,  and  gives  a  higher 
notion  of  his  powers  than  any  of  those  work?  to  which  he 
put  his  name.  That  he  was  altogether  wrong  on  the  main 
question,  and  on  all  the  collateral  questions  springing  out  of 
it,  that  his  knowledge  of  the  language,  the  literature,  and 


24  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  history  of  Greece,  was  not  equal  to  what  many  fresh- 
men now  bring  up* every  year  to  Cambridge  and  Oxford, 
and  that  some  of  his  blunders  seem  rather  to  deserve  a  flog- 
ging than  a  refutation,  is  true ;  and  therefore  it  is  that  his 
performance  is,  in  ttie  highest  degree,  interesting  and  valu- 
able to  the  judicious  reader.  It  is  good  by  reason  of  its  ex- 
ceeding badness.  It  is  the  most  extraordinary  instance  that 
exists  of  the  art  of  making  much  show  with  little  substance. 
There  is  no  difficulty,  says  the  steward  of  Moliere's  miser, 
in  giving  a  fine  dinner  with  plenty  of  money ;  the  really 
great  cook  is  he  who  can  set  out  a  banquet  with  no  money 
at  alL  That  Bentley  should  have  written  excellently  on 
ancient  chronology  and  geography,  on  the  development  of 
the  Greek  language,  and  the  origin  of  the  Greek  drama,  is 
not  strange.  But  that  Atterbury  should,  during  some  years, 
have  been  thought  to  have  treated  these  subjects  much  better 
than  Bentley,  is  strange  indeed.  It  is  true  that  the  cham- 
pion of  Christ  Church  had  all  the  help  which  the  most  cele- 
brated members  of  that  society  could  give  him.  Smalridge 
contributed  some  very  good  wit;  Friend  and  others  some 
very  bad  archaeology  and  philology.  But  the  greater  part 
of  the  volume  was  entirely  Atterbury's ;  what  was  not  his 
own  Avas  revised  and  retouched  by  him  ;  and  the  whole  bears 
the  mark  of  his  mind,  a  mind  inexhaustibly  rich  in  all  the 
resources  of  controversy,  and  famihar  with  all  the  artifices 
which  make  falsehood  look  like  truth,  and  ignorance  like 
knowledge.  He  had  little  gold  ;  but  he  beat  that  little  out 
to  the  very  thinnest  leaf,  and  spread  it  over  so  vast  a  sur- 
face, that  to  those  who  judged  by  a  glance,  and  who  did  not 
resort  to  balances  and  tests,  the  glittering  heap  of  worth- 
less matter  which  he  produced  seemed  to  be  an  inestimable 
treasure  of  massy  bullion.  Such  arguments  as  he  had  he 
placed  in  the  clearest  light.  Where  he  bad  no  argu- 
ments, he  resorted  to  personalities,  sometimes  serious,  gen 
erally  ludicrous,  always  clever  and  cutthig.     But  whether  he 


FRANCIS   ATTERBURT.  25 

was  grave  or  merry,  whether  he  reasoned  or  sneered,  his 
style  was  always  pure,  polished,  and  easy. 

Party  spirit  then  ran  high ;  yet  though  Bentley  ranked 
among  Whigs,  and  Christ  Church  was  a  strong-hold  of  Tory- 
ism, Whigs  joined  with  Tories  in  applauding  Atterbury's 
volume.  Garth  insulted  Bentley  and  extolled  Boyle  in  lines 
which  are  now  never  quoted  except  to  be  laughed  at. 
Swift,  in  his  Battle  of  the  Books,  introduced  with  much 
pleasantry  Boyle,  clad  in  armor,  the  gift  of  aU  the  gods,  and 
directed  by  Apollo  in  the  form  of  a  human  friend,  for  whose 
name  a  blank  is  left  which  may  easily  be  filled  up.  The 
youth,  so  accoutred  and  so  assisted,  gains  an  easy  victory 
over  his  uncourteous  and  boastful  antagonist  Bentley, 
meanwhile,  was  supported  by  the  consciousness  of  an  im- 
measurable superiority,  and  encouraged  by  the  voices  of  the 
few  who  were  really  competent  to  judge  the  combat.  "  No 
man,"  he  said,  justly  and  nobly,  "  was  ever  written  down  but 
by  himself."  He  spent  two  years  in  preparing  a  reply 
which  will  never  cease  to  be  read  and  prized  while  the  liter- 
ature of  ancient  Greece  is  studied  in  any  part  of  the  world. 
This  reply  proved  not  only  that  the  letters  ascribed  to 
Phalaiis  were  spurious,  but  that  Atterbury,  with  all  his  wit, 
his  eloquence,  his  skill  in  controversial  fence,  was  the  most 
audacious  pretender  that  ever  wrote  about  what  he  did  not 
understand.  But  to  Atterbury  this  exposure  was  matter  of 
indifference.  He  was  now  engaged  in  a  dispute  about 
matters  far  more  important  and  exciting  than  the  laws  of 
Zaleucus  and  the  laws  of  Charondas.  The  rage  of  relig- 
ious factions  was  extreme.  High-church  and  low-church 
divided  the  nation.  The  great  majority  of  the  clergy  were 
on  tbe» high-church  side;  the  majority  of  King  William's 
bishops  were  inclined  to  latitudinarianism.  A  dispute  arose 
between  the  two  parties  touching  the  extent  of  the  powers 
of  the  Lower  House  of  Convocation.  Atterbury  eagerly  thrust 
himself  into  the  front  rank  of  the  high-churchmen.     Those 

3 


26  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

who  take  a  comprehensive  and  impartial  view  of  his  whole  ca- 
reer, will  not  be  disposed  to  give  him  credit  for  religious  zeal. 
But  it  was  his  nature  to  be  vehement  and  pugnacious  in  the 
tause  of  every  fraternity  of  which  he  was  a  member.  He  had 
defended  the  genuineness  of  a  spurious  book  simply  because 
Christ  Church  had  put  forth  an  edition  of  that  book ;  but 
now  stood  up  for  the  clergy  against  the  civil  power,  simply 
because  he  was  a  clergyman  ;  and  for  the  priests  against  the 
Episcopal  order  simply  because  he  was  as  yet  only  a  priest. 
He  asserted  the  pretensions  of  the  class  to  which  he  be- 
longed in  several  treatises  written  with  much  wit,  ingenuity, 
audacity  and  acrimony.  In  this,  as  in  his  first  controversy, 
he  was  opposed  to  antagonists  whose  knowledge  of  the  sub- 
ject in  dispute  was  far  superior  to  his ;  but  in  this,  as  in 
his  first  controversy,  he  imposed  on  the  multitude  by  bold 
assertion,  by  sarcasm,  by  declamation,  and,  above  all,  by  his 
peculiar  knack  of  exhibiting  a  little  erudition  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  make  it  look  like  a  great  deal.  Having  passed 
himself  off  on  the  world  as  a  greater  master  of  classical  learn- 
ing than  Bentley,  he  now  passed  himself  oiF  as  a  greater  mas- 
ter of  ecclesiastical  learning  than  Wake  or  Gibson.  By  the 
great  body  of  the  clergy  he  was  regarded  as  the  ablest  and 
most  intrepid  tribune  that  had  ever  defended  their  rights 
against  the  oligarchy  of  prelates.  The  Lower  House  of  Convo- 
cation voted  him  thanks  for  his  services ;  the  University  of 
Oxford  created  him  a  doctor  of  divinity ;  and  soon  after  the 
accession  of  Anne,  while  the  Tories  still  had  the  chief  weight  in 
the  government,  he  was  promoted  to  the  deanery  of  Carlisle. 
Soon  after  he  had  obtained  this  preferment,  the  Whig 
party  i*ose  to  ascendency  in  the  state.  From  that  party  he 
could  expect  no  favor.  Six  years  elapsed  before  sr  cliange 
of  fortune  took  place.  At  length,  in  the  year  1710,  the 
prosecution  of  Sacheverell  produced  a  formidable  explosion 
of  high-church  fanaticism.  At  such  a  moment  Atterbury 
could  not  fail  to  be  conspicuous.     His  inordinate  zeal  for 


FEANCIS    ATTEEBURY.  27 

the  body  to  which  he  belonged,  his  turbulent  and  aspiring 
temper,  his  rare  talents  for  agitation  and  for  controversy 
were  again  signally  displayed.  He  bore  a  chief  part  in 
framing  that  artful  and  eloquent  speech  which  the  accused 
divine  pronounced  at  the  bar  of  the  Lords,  and  which  pre- 
sents a  singular  contrast  to  the  absurd  and  scurrilous  sermon 
which  had  very  unwisely  been  honored  with  impeachment. 
Ihiring  the  troubled  and  anxious  months  which  followed  the 
trial,  Atterbury  was  among  the  most  active  of  those  pamph- 
leteers who  inflamed  the  nation  against  the  Whig  ministry 
and  the  Whig  parliament.  When  the  ministry  had  been 
changed  and  the  parliament  dissolved,  rewards  were  show- 
ered upon  him.  The  Lower  House  of  Convocation  elected 
him  prolocutor.  The  Queen  appointed  him  Dean  of  Christ 
Church  on  the  death  of  his  old  friend  and  patron  Aldrich. 
The  college  would  have  preferred  a  gentler  ruler.  Never- 
theless, the  new  head  was  received  with  every  mark  of 
honor.  A  congratulatory  oration  in  Latin  was  addressed  to 
him  in  the  magnificent  vestibule  of  the  hall ;  and  he  in 
reply  professed  the  warmest  attachment  to  the  venerable 
house  in  which  he  had  been  educated,  and  paid  many  gra- 
cious compliments  to  those  over  whom  he  was  to  preside. 
But  it  was  not  in  his  nature  to  be  a  mild  or  an  equitable 
governor.  He  had  left  the  chapter  of  Carlisle  distracted  by 
quarrels.  He  found  Christ  Church  at  peace ;  but  in  three 
months  his  despotic  and  contentious  temper  did  at  Christ 
Church  what  it  had  done  at  Carlisle.  He  was  succeeded  in 
both  his  deaneries  by  the  humane  and  accomplished  Smal- 
ridge,  who  gently  complained  of  the  state  in  which  both  had 
been  left.  "  Atterbury  goes  before  and  sets  every  thing  on 
fire.  I  come  after  him  with  a  bucket  of  water."  It  was 
said  by  Atterbury's  enemies  that  he  was  made  a  bishop 
because  he  was  so  bad  a  dean.  Under  his  administration 
Christ  Church  was  in  confusion,  scandalous  altercations  took 
place,  opprobrious  words  \vere  exchanged ;  and  there  was 


28  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

reason  to  fear  that  the  great  Tory  college  would  be  ruined 
by  the  tyranny  of  the  great  Tory  doctor.  He  was  soon 
removed  to  the  bishopric  of  Rochester,  which  was  then 
always  united  with  the  deanery  of  "Westminster.  Still 
higher  dignities  seemed  to  be  before  him.  For,  though 
there  were  many  able  men  on  the  episcopal  bench,  there 
was  none  who  equalled  or  approached  him  in  parliamentary 
talents.  Had  his  party  continued  in  power,  it  is  not  im- 
probable that  he  would  have  been  raised  to  the  archbishop- 
ric of  Canterbury.  The  more  splendid  his  prospects,  the 
more  reason  he  had  to  .dread  the  accession  of  a  family  which 
was  well  known  to  be  partial  to  the  Whigs.  There  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that  he  was  one  of  those  politicians  who 
hoped  that  they  might  be  able,  during  the  life  of  Anne,  to 
prepare  matters  in  such  a  way  that  at  her  decease  there 
might  be  little  difficulty  in  setting  aside  the  Act  of  Settle- 
ment and  placing  the  Pretender  on  the  throne.  Her  sud- 
'  den  death  confounded  the  projects  of  these  conspirators. 
Atterbury,  who  wanted  no  kind  of  courage,  implored  his 
confederates  to  proclaim  James  III.,  and  offered  to  accom- 
pany the  heralds  in  lawn  sleeves.  But  he  found  even  the 
bravest  soldiers  of  his  party  irresolute,  and  exclaimed,  not, 
it  is  said,  without  interjections  which  ill  became  the  mouth 
of  a  father  of  the  church,  that  the  best  of  all  causes  and 
the  most  precious  of  all  moments  had  been  pusillanimously 
thrown  away.  He  acquiesced  in  what  he  could  not  jirevent, 
took  the  oaths  to  the  House  of  Hanover,  and  at  the  corona- 
tion officiated  with  the  outward  show  of  zeal,  and  did  his 
best  to  ingratiate  himself  with  the  royal  family.  But  his 
servility  was  requited  with  cold  contempt.  No  creature  is 
so  revengeful  as  a  proud  man  who  has  humbled  himself  in 
vain.  Atterbury  became  the  most  factious  and  pertinacious 
of  all  the  opponents  of  the  government.  In  the  House  of 
Lords,  his  oratory,  lucid,  pointed,  lively,  and  set  off  with 
every  grace  of  pronunciation  and  of  gesture,  extorted  the 


FRANCIS    ATTERBUKY.  29 

attention  and  admiration  even  of  a  hostile  majority.  Some 
of  the  most  remarkable  protests  which  appear  in  the 
journals  of  the  peers  were  drawn  up  by  him ;  and  in  some 
of  the  bitterest  of  those  pamphlets  which  called  on  the  Eng- 
lish to  stand  up  for  their  country  against  the  aliens  who  had 
come  from  beyond  the  seas  to  oppress  and  plunder  her, 
critics  easily  detected  his  style.  When  the  rebellion  of 
1715  broke  out,  he  refused  to  sign  the  paper  in  which  the 
bishops  of  the  province  of  Canterbury  declared  their  attach- 
ment to  the  Protestant  succession.  He  busied  himself  in 
electioneering,  especially  at  Westminster,  where  as  dean  he 
possessed  great  influence;  and  was,  indeed,  strongly  sus- 
pected of  having  once  set  on  a  riotous  mob  to  prevent  his 
Whig  fellow-citizens  from  polling. 

After  having  been  long  in  indirect  communication  with 
the  exiled  family,  he,  in  1717,  began  to  correspond  directly 
with  the  Pretender.  The  first  letter  of  the  correspondence 
is  extant.  In  that  letter  Atterbury  boasts  of  having,  during 
many  years  past,  neglected  no  opportunity  of  serving  the 
Jacobite  cause.  "  My  daily  prayer,"  he  says,  "  is  that  you 
may  have  success.  May  I  live  to  see  that  day,  and  live  no 
longer  than  I  do  what  is  in  my  power  to  forward  it."  It  is 
to  be  remembered  that  he  who  wrote  thus  was  a  man  bound 
to  set  to  the  church  of  which  he  was  overseer  an  example 
of  strict  probity;  that  he  had  repeatedly  sworn  allegiance 
to  the  House  of  Brunswick  ;  that  he  had  assisted  in  placing 
the  crown  on  the  head  of  George  I.,  and  that  he  had  ab- 
jured James  III.,  "  without  equivocation  or  mental  reserva- 
tion, on  the  true  faith  of  a  Christian." 

It  is  agreeable  to  turn  from  his  public  to  his  private  life. 
His  turbulent  spirit,  wearied  with  faction  and  treason,  now 
and  then  required  repose,  and  found  it  in  domestic  endear- 
ments, and  in  the  society  of  the  most  illustrious  of  the 
living  and  of  the  dead.  Of  his  wife  little  is  known :  but 
between  him  and  his  daughter  there  was  an  affection  singu- 
3* 


30  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

larly  close  and  tender.  The  gentleness  of  his  manners 
when  he  was  in  the  company  of  a  few  friends  was  such  as 
seemed  hardly  credible  to  those  who  knew  him  only  by  his 
writings  and  speeches.  The  charm  of  his  "softer  hour" 
has  been  commemorated  by  one  of  those  friends  in  imper- 
ishable verse.  Though  Atterbury's  classical  attainments 
were  not  great,  his  taste  in  English  literature  was  excellent ; 
and  his  admiration  of  genius  was  so  strong  that  it  over- 
powered even  his  political  and  religious  antipathies.  His 
fondness  for  Milton,  the  mortal  enemy  of  the  Stuarts  and 
of  the  church,  was  such  as  to  many  Tories  seemed  a  crime. 
On  the  sad  night  on  which  Addison  .was  laid  in  the  chapel 
of  Henry  VH.,  the  Westminster  boys  remarked  that  Atter- 
bury  read  the  funeral  service  with  peculiar  tenderness  and 
solemnity.  The  favorite  companions,  however,  of  the  great 
Tory  prelate  were,  as  might  have  been  expected,  men  whose 
politics  had  at  least  a  tinge  of  Toryism.  He  lived  on 
friendly  terms  with  Swift,  Arbuthnot,  and  Gay.  "With 
Prior  he  had  a  close  intimacy,  which  some  misunderstand- 
ing about  public  affairs  at  last  dissolved.  Pope  found  in 
Atterbury  not  only  a  warm  admirer,  but  a  most  faithful, 
fearless,  and  judicious  adviser.  The  poet  was  a  frequent 
guest  at  the  episcopal  palace  among  the  elms  of  Bromley, 
and  entertained  not  the  slightest  suspicion  that  his  host,  now 
declining  in  years,  confined  to  an  easy  chair  by  gout,  and 
apparently  devoted  to  literature,  was  deeply  concerned  in 
criminal  and  perilous  designs  against  the  government. 

The  spirit  of  the  Jacobites  had  been  cowed  by  the  events 
of  1715.  It  revived  in  1721.  The  failure  of  the  South 
Sea  project,  the  panic  in  the  money  market,  the  downfall  of 
great  commercial  houses,  the  distress  from  which  no  pai't 
of  the  kingdom  was  exempt,  had  produced  general  discon- 
tent. It  seemed  not  improbable  that  at  such  a  moment  an 
insurrection  might  be  successful.  An  insurrection  was 
planned.     The  streets  of  London  were  to  be  barricaded ; 


FRANCIS    ATTERBURY.  31 

the  Tower  and  the  Bank  were  to  be  surprised;  King 
George,  his  family  and  his  chief  captains  and  councillors 
were  to  be  arrested,  and  King  James  was  to  be  proclaimed. 
The  design  became  known  to  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  regent 
of  France,  who  was  on  terms  of  friendship  with  the  House 
of  Hanover.  He  put  the  English  government  on  its  guard. 
Some  of  the  chief  malcontents  were  committed  to  prison ; 
and  among  them  was  Atterbury.  No  bishop  of  the  Church 
of  England  had  been  taken  into  custody  since  that  memora- 
ble day  when  the  applauses  and  prayers  of  all  London  had 
,  followed  the  seven  bishops  to  the  gate  of  the  Tower.     The 

Opposition  entertained  spme  hope  that  it  might  be  possible 
to  excite  among  the  people  an  enthusiasm  resembling  that 
of  their  fathers,  who  rushed  into  the  waters  of  the  Thames  to 
implore  the  blessing  of  Sancroft.  Pictures  of  the  heroic  con- 
fessor in  his  cell  were  exhibited  at  the  shop  windows.  Verses 
in  his  pi'aise  were  sung  about  the  streets.  The  restraints  by 
which  he  was  prevented  from  communicating  with  his  accom- 
plices were  represented  as  cruelties  worthy  of  the  dungeons 
of  the  Inquisition.  Strong  appeals  were  made  to  the  priest- 
I  hood.     Would  Ihey  tamely  permit  so  gross"  an  insult  to  be 

'  offered  to  their  cloth  ?     Would  they  suffer  the  ablest,  the 

most  eloquent  member  of  their  profession,  the  man  who  had 
so  often  stood  up  for  their  rights  against  the  civil  power,  to 
be  treated  like  the  vilest  of  mankind?  There  was  con- 
siderable excitement ;  but  it  was  allayed  by  a  temperate 
and  artful  letter  to  the  clergy,  the  work,  in  all  probability, 
of  Bishop  Gibson,  who  stood  high  in  the  favor  of  Walpole, 
and  shortly  after  became  minister  for  ecclesiastical  affairs. 

Atterbury  remained  in  close  confinement  during  some 
months.  He  had  carried  on  his  correspondence  with  the 
exiled  family  so  cautiously  that  the  circumstantial  proofs  of 
his  guilt,  though  sufficient  to  produce  entire  moral  convic- 
tion, were  not  sufiicient  to  justify  legal  conviction.  He 
could  be   reached   only  by  a  bill  of  pains  and   penalties. 


S2  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

Such  a  bill  the  Whig  party,  then  decidedly  predominant  in 
both  houses,  was  quite  prepared  to  support.  Many  hot- 
headed members  of  that  party  were  eager  to  follow  the  pre- 
cedent which  had  been  set  in  the  case  of  Sir  John  Fenwick, 
and  to  pass  an  act  for  cutting  off  the  bishop's  head.  Ca- 
dogan,  who  commanded  the  army,  a  brave  soldier,  but  a 
headstrong  politician,  is  said  to  have  exclaimed,  with  great 
vehemence :  "  Fling  him  to  the  lions  in  the  Tower."  But 
the  wiser  and  more  humane  Walpole  was  always  unwilling 
to  shed  blood;  and  his  influence  prevailed.  When  par- 
liament met,  the  evidence  against  the  bishop  was  laid  be- 
fore committees  of  both  houses. .  Those  committees  re- 
ported that  his  guilt  was  proved.  In  the  Commons  a  res- 
olution, pronouncing  him  a  traitor,  was  carried  by  nearly 
two  to  one.  A  bill  was  then  introduced  which  provided  that 
he  should  be  deprived  of  his  spiritual  dignities,  that  lie 
should  be  banished  for  life,  and  that  no  British  subject 
should  hold  any  intercourse  with  him  except  by  the  royal 
permission. 

This  bill  passed  the  Commons  with  little  difiiculty.  For 
the  bishop,  though  invited  to  defend  himself,  chose  to  re- 
serve his  defence  for  tlie  assembly  of  which  he  was  a  mem- 
ber. In  the  Lords  the  contest  was  sharp.  The  young 
Duke  of  Wharton,  distinguished  by  his  parts,  his  dissolute- 
ness, and  his  versatility,  spoke  for  Atterbury  with  great 
effect;  and  Atterbury's  own  voice  was  heard  for  the  last 
time  by  that  unfriendly  audience  which  had  so  often  listened 
to  him  with  mingled  aversion  and  dehght.  He  produced  few 
witnesses,  nor  did  those  witnesses  say  much  that  could  be 
of  service  to  him.  Among  them  was  Pope.  He  was 
called  to  prove  that,  while  he  was  an  inmate  of  the  palace  at 
Bromley,  the  bishop's  time  was  completely  occupied  by  lit- 
erary and  domestic  matters,  and  that  no  leisure  was  left  for 
plotting.  But  Pope,  who  was  quite  unaccustomed  to  speak 
in   public,  lost  his   head,   and,   as   he   afterwards   owned, 


FRANCIg    ATTERBURY.  83 

though  he  had  only  ten  words  to  say,  made  two  or  three 
blunders. 

The  bill  finally  passed  the  Lords  by  eighty-three  votes  to 
forty-three.  The  bishops,  with  a  single  exception,  were  ia 
the  majority.  Their  conduct  drew  on  them  a  sharp  taunt 
from  Lord  Bathurst,  a  warm  friend  of  Atterbury  and  a 
zealous  Tory,  "  The  wild  Indians"  he  said,  "give  no  quartfer, 
because  they  believe  that  they  shall  inherit  the  skill  and 
prowess  of  every  adversary  whom  they  destroy.  Perhaps 
the  animosity  of  the  right  reverend  prelates  to  their  brother, 
may  be  explained  in  the  same  way."  Atterbury  took  leave 
of  those  whom  he  loved  with  a  dignity  and  tenderness 
worthy  of  a  better  man.  Three  fine  lines  of  his  favorite 
poet  were  often  in  his  mouth :  — 

"  Some  natural  tears  he  dropped  but  wiped  them  soon  : 
The  world  was  all  before  him,  wliere  to  choose 
His  place  of  rest,  and  Providence  his  guide." 

At  parting  he  presented  Pope  with  a  Bible,  and  said,  with 
a  disingcnuousness  of  which  no  man  who  had  studied  the 
Bible  to  much  purpose  would  have  been  guilty :  "  If  ever 
you  learn  that  I  have  any  d^lings  with  the  Pretender,  I 
give  you  leave  to  say  that  my  punishment  is  jiist."  Pope, 
at  this  time,  really  believed  the  bishop  to  be  an  injured  man. 
Arbuthnot  seems  to  have  been  of  the  same  opinion.  Swift, 
a  few  months  later,  ridiculed  with  great  bitterness  in  the 
Voyage  to  Laputa,  the  evidence  which  had  satisfied  the  two 
houses  of  parhament.  Soon,  however,  the  most  partial 
friends  of  the  banished  prelate  ceased  to  assert  his  innocence, 
and  contented  themselves  with  lamenting  and  excusing  what 
they  could  not  defend.  .  After  a  short  stay  at  Brussels, 
he  had  taken  up  his  abode  at  Paris,  and  had  become  the 
leading  man  among  the  Jacobite  refugees  who  were  as- 
sembled there.  He  was  invited  to  Rome  by  the  Pretender, 
who  there  held  his  mock  court  under  the  immediate  protec- 


34  NEW   BIOGU^PHIES. 

tion  of  the  Pope.  But  Atterbury  felt  that  a  bishop  of  the 
Church  of  England  would  bfe  strangely  out  of  place  at  the 
Vatican,  and  declined  the  invitation.  During  some  months, 
however,  he  miglit  flatter  himself  that  he  stood  high  in  the 
good  graces  of  James.  The  correspondence  between  the 
master  and  the  servant  was  constant.  Atterbury's  merits 
were  warmly  acknowledged,  his  advice  was  respectfully 
received,  and  he  was,  as  Bolingbroke  had  been  before  him, 
the  prime  minister  of  a  king  without  a  kingdom.  But  the 
new  favorite  found,  as  Bolingbroke  had  found  before  him, 
that  it  was  quite  as  hard  to  keep  the  shadow  of  power  under 
a  vagrant  and  mendicant  prince  as  to  keep  the  reality  of 
power  at  Westminster.  Though  James  had  neither  terri- 
tories nor  revenues,  neither  army  nor  navy,  there  was  more 
faction  and  more  intrigue  among  his  courtiers  than  among 
those  of  his  successful  rival.  Atterbury  soon  perceived 
that  his  counsels  were  disregarded,  if  not  distrusted.  His 
proud  spirit  was  deeply  wounded.  He  quitted  Paris,  fixed 
his  residence  at  Montpelier,  gave  up  politics,  and  devoted 
himself  entirely  to  letters.  In  the  sixth  year  of  his  exile  he 
had  so  severe  an  illness,  thq,t  his  daughter,  herself  in  very 
delicate  health,  determined  to  run  all  risks  that  she  might 
see  him  once  more.  Having  obtained  a  license  from  the 
English  govei'nment,  she  went  by  sea  to  Bordeaux,  but 
landed  there  in  such  a  state  that  she  could  travel  only  by 
boat  or  in  a  litter.  Her  father,  in  spite  of  his  infirmities, 
set  out  from  Montpelier  to  meet  her;  and  she,  with  the 
impatience  which  is  often  the  sign  of  approaching  death, 
hastened  towards  him.  Those  who  were  about  her  in  vain 
implored  her  to  travel  slowly.  She  said  that  every  hour 
was  precious,  that  she  only  wished  to  see  her  papa  and  to 
die.  She  met  him  at  Toulouse,  embraced  him,  received 
from  his  hand  the  sacred  bread  and  wine,  and  thanked  God 
that  they  had  passed  one  day  in  each  other's  society  before 
they  parted  for  ever.     She  died  that  night. 


FRANCIS    ATTERBURY.  85 

It  was  some  time  before  even  the  strong  mind  of  Atter- 
bury  recovered  from  this  cruel  blow.  As  soon  as  he  was 
himself  again,  he  became  eager  for  action  and  conflict :  for 
grief,  which  disposes  gentle  natures  to  retirement,  to  inac- 
tion, and  to  meditation,  only  makes  restless  spirits  more  rest- 
less. The  Pretender,  dull  and  bigoted  as  he  was,  had  found 
out  that  he  had  not  acted  wisely  in  parting  with  one  who, 
though  a  heretic,  was,  in  abilities  and  accomplishments,  the 
foremost  man  of  the  Jacobite  party.  The  bishop  was 
courted  back,  and  was  without  much  difficulty  induced  to 
return  to  Pai'is  and  to  become  once  more  the  phantom  min- 
ister of  a  phantom  monarchy.  But  his  long  and  troubled 
life  was  drawing  to  a  close.  To  the  last,  however,  his  intel- 
lect retained  all  its  keenness  and  vigor.  He  learned,  in  the 
ninth  year  of  his  banishment,  that  he  had  been  accused  by 
Oldmixon,  as  dishonest  and  malignant  a  scribbler  as  any 
that  has  been  saved  from  oblivion  by  the  Dunciad,  of  hav- 
ing, in  concert  with  other  Christ  Churchmen,  garbled  Clar- 
endon's History  of  the  Rebellion.  The  charge,  as  respected 
Atterbury,  had  not  the  slightest  foundation  ;  for  he^as  not 
one  of  the  editors  of  the  History,  and  never  saw  it  till  it 
was  printed.  He  published  a  short  vindication  of  himself, 
which  is  a  model  in  its  kind,  luminous,  temperate,  and  dig- 
nified. A  copy  of  this  little  work  he  sent  to  the  Pretender, 
with  a  letter  singularly  eloquent  and  graceful.  It  was  im-  ' 
possible,  the  old  man  said,  that  he  should  write  any  thing  on 
such  a  subject,  without  being  reminded  of  the  resemblance 
between  his  own  fate  and  that  of  Clarendon.  They  were  the 
only  two  English  subjects  that  had  ever  been  banished  from 
their  country,  and  debarred  from  all  communication  with 
their  friends  by  act  of  parliament.  But  here  the  resem- 
blance ended.  One  of  the  exiles  had  been  so  happy  as  to 
bear  a  chief  part  in  the  restoration  of  the  Royal  house. 
All  that  the  other  could  now  do  was  to  die  asserting  the 
rights  of  that  house  to  the  last.    A  few  weeks  after  this  let- 


36  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ter  was  written  Atterbury  died.     He  had  just  completed 
his  seventieth  year. 

His  body  was  brought  to  England,  and  laid  with  great 
privacy  under  the  nave  of  Westminster  Abbey.  Only 
three  mourners  followed  the  coffin.  No  inscription  marks 
the  grave.  That  the  epitaph  with  which  Pope  honored  the 
memory  of  his  friend  does  not  appear  on  the  walls  of  the 
great  national  cemetery,  is  no  subject  of  regret :  for  nothing 
worse  was  ever  written  by  CoUey  Gibber.  Those  who  wish 
for  more  complete  information  about  Atterbury,  may  easily 
collect  it  from  his  sermons  and  his  controversial  writings, 
from  the  report  of  the  parliamentary  proceedings  against 
him,  which  will  be  found  in  the  State  Trials  ;  from  the  five 
volumes  of  his  correspondence,  edited  by  Mr.  Nichols,  and 
from  the  first  volume  of  the  Stuart  papers,  edited  by  Mr. 
Glover.  A  very  indulgent,  but  a  very  interesting  account 
of  the  Bishop's  political  career  will  be  found  in  Lord 
Mahon's  valuable  History  of  England. 


FKANCIS  BACON, 

VISCOUNT   ST.  ALBANS   AND    BARON   VERULAM. 


This  illustrious  man  was  born  in  London  on  the  twenty- 
second  of  January,  1561.  His  father.  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon, 
a  courtier,  a  lawyer,  and  a  man  of  erudition,  stood  high 
in  the  favor  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  was  lord-keeper 
during  twenty  years  of  her  reign.  Anne,  the  second  wife 
of  Sir  Nicholas,  and  the  philosopher's  mother,  was  the 
daughter  of  Sir  Anthony  Cooke,  Edward  the  Sixth's  tutor, 
and  was  herself  distinguished  among  the  learned  females  of 
the  time.  One  of  her  sisters  became  the  wife  of  Elizabeth's 
celebrated  treasurer.  Lord  Burleigh.  Delicate  in  health, 
and  devoted  to  sedentary  employment,  Francis  Bacon  ex- 
hibited in  early  boyhood  the  dawning  of  those  powers  whose 
versatility  afterwards  became  not  less  remarkable  than  their 
strength.  As  a  child  he  delighted  the  queen  with  his  pre- 
cocious gravity  and  readiness  of  speech ;  and  before  he  had 
completed  his  twelfth  year  we  see  him  investigating  the 
cause  of  a  singular  echo  in  a  conduit,  and  endeavoring  to 
penetrate  the  mystery  of  a  juggler  who  performed  in  his 
father's  house.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  he  was  matriculated 
at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  of  which  Whitgift  was  then 
master ;  but  his  residence  at  the  University  lasted  scarcely 
three  years,  and  his  writings  contain  many  expressions  of 
4  (37) 


38  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

dissatisfaction  with  the  current  system  of  academical  educa- 
tion. In  his  sixteenth  year  he  was  sent  abroad,  and  lived 
for  some  time  at  Paris,  under  the  charge  of  the  English  am- 
bassador. Sir  Amias  Paulett ;  after  wiiicli  he  visited  the 
French  provinces,  and  added  to  his  literary  and  philosoph- 
ical studies  an  acquaintance  with  foreign  policy  and  statis- 
tics, the  fruit  of  which  soon  appeared  in  his  tract  upon  the 
state  of  Europe.  In  February,  1580,  his  father  died,  and 
he  immediately  returned  to  England.  ^ 

Sir  Nicholas  left  but  a  scanty  fortune ;  and  his  son  Fran- 
cis, the  youngest  of  a  large  family,  found  himself  obliged,  in 
his  twentieth  year,  to  devise  the  means  of  earning  a  liveli- 
hood. It  might  have  been  thought  that  friends  could  not 
have  been  wanting  to  one  who,  besides  his  own  acknowledged 
merit,  had  it  in  his  power  to  urge  the  long  and  honorable 
services  of  his  father,  while  his  uncle  was  the  prime  minister 
of  the  kingdom.  Of  the  patronage  which  thus  seemed  to 
be  at  his  command.  Bacon  attempted  to  avail  himself,  desir- 
ing to  obtain  such  a  public  employment  as  might  enable  him 
to  unite  political  activity  in  some  degree  with  literary  study. 
But  his  suit  was  received  neglectfully  by  the  queen,  and 
harshly  repulsed  by  his  kinsman.  Although  all  the  causes 
of  this  conduct  may  not  be  discoverable,  a  few  lie  at  the 
surface.  The  lord-keeper  had,  in  the  later  years  of  his  life, 
lost  the  royal  favor.  Burleigh,  besides  his  notorious  con- 
tempt for  men  of  letters,  had  to  provide  for  sons  of  his  own, 
to  whom  their  accomplished  cousin  might  have  proved  a  dan- 
gerous rival.  From  the  Cecils,  indeed,  Bacon  never  derived 
any  efficient  aid,  till  he  had  forced  his  way  upwards  in  spite 
of  them ;  and  there  are  evident  traces  of  jealousy  and  dis- 
like in  the  mode  in  which  he  was  treated  both  by  the  old 
treasurer,  and  by  his  second  son,  Robert. 

Obliged,  therefore,  to  betake  himself  to  the  law.  Bacon  was 
admitted  at  Gray's  Inn,  where  he  spent  several  years  ob- 
scurely in  the  study  of  his  profession,  but  with  increasing 


FUANCIS   BACON.  39 

practice  at  the  bar.  The  friendship  of  his  fellow  lawyers, 
earned  by  his  amiable  disposition  and  his  activity  in  the 
affairs  of  the  society,  bestowed  on  him  offices  in  his  inn  of 
court ;  but  his  kinsmen  were  still  cold  and  haughty.  Lord 
Burleigh  continued  to  write  him  letters  of  reproof;  and 
Robert  Cecil,  already  a  rising  statesman,  sneered  at  specula- 
tive intellects,  and  insinuated  their  unfitness  for  the  business 
of  life.  In  1590,  when  Bacon  was  in  his  thirtieth  year,  he 
was  visited  for  the  first  time  with  court  favor,  receiving  then 
an  honorary  appointment  as  queen's  counsel  extraordinary  ; 
and  to  this  was  added  a  grant  of  the  reversion  of  a  clerk- 
ship in  the  star-chamber,  which  did  not  become  vacant  for 
eighteen  years.  But  the  lawyer's  heart  was  not  in  his  task. 
His  brilliant  professional  success,  and  the  awakening  friend- 
ship of  his  relations,  merely  suggested  to  him  renewed 
attempts  to  escape  from  the  drudgery  of  the  bar.  His 
views  are  nobly  expressed  in  a  letter  which  he  addressed  to 
the  lord-treasurer  the    year  after  his   appointment.'     We 

1  "  I  was  now  somewhat  ancient ;  one  and  thirty  years  is  a  great 
deal  of  sand  in  the  hour-glass.  My  health,  I  thank  God,  I  find  con- 
firmed, and  I  do  not  fear  that  action  shall  impair  it ;  because  I  account 
my  oi'dinary  course  of  study  and  meditation  to  be  more  painful  than 
most  parts  of  action  are.  I  ever  bear  a  mind,  in  some  middle  place 
that  I  could  discharge,  to  serve  her  majesty ;  not  as  a  man  born  under 
Sol  that  loveth  honor,  nor  under  Jupiter  that  loveth  business,  for  the 
contemplative  planet  carrieth  me  away  wholly ;  but  as  a  man  born  un- 
der an  excellent  sovereign,  that  deserveth  the  dedication  of  all  men's 

abilities Again,  the  meanness  of  my  estate  doth  somewhat  move 

me ;  for,  though  I  cannot  accuse  myself  that  I  am  either  prodigal  or 
slothful,  yet  my  health  is  not  to  spend,  nor  my  course  to  get.  Lastly, 
I  confess  that  I  have  as  vast  contemplative  ends,  as  I  have  moderate 
civil  ends ;  for  I  have  taken  all  knowledge  to  be  mi/ province  ;  and  if  I  could 
purge  it  of  two  sorts  of  rovers  —  whereof  the  one  with  frivolous  dispu- 
tations, confutations,  and  verbosities,  the  other  with  blind  experiments, 
and  auricular  traditions  and  impostures,  have  committed  so  many 
spoils,  —  I  hope  I  should  bring  in  industrious  observations,  grounded 
conclusions,  and  profitable  inventions  and  discoveries ;  the  best  state 
of  that  province.  This,  whether  it  be  curiosity,  or  vainglory,  or 
nature,  or  (if  one  take  it  more  favorably)  philauthropia,  is  so  fixed 


40  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

lingei"  with  melancholy  pleasure  over  these  abortive  efforts 
made  by  one  of  the  finest  and  most  capacious  of  intellects 
to  extricate  itself  from  that  labyrinth  of  worldly  turmoil,  in 
which  its  owner  was  destined  to  purchase  rank  and  splendor 
at  the  expense  of  moral  degradation  and  final  ruin. 

We  are  henceforth  to  behold  Bacon  actively  engaged  in 
political  life,  as  well  as  in  the  duties  of  his  profession.  Two 
parties  then  divided  the  court,  equally  remarkable  in  differ- 
ent ways  on  account  of  those  who  headed  them.  Burleigh 
was  the  chief  of  the  queen's  old  counsellors,  on  whom, 
amidst  all  her  caprices,  she  always  had  the  prudence  to  rely 
for  the  real  business  of  the  state :  the  young  and  gay,  who 
aspired  to  be  ranked  as  the  personal  friends  or  adorers 
of  the  withered  sovereign  of  hearts,  were  led  by  the  high- 
spirited  and  imprudent  Earl  of  Essex.  To  the  party  of  this 
nobleman  Bacon  decidedly  attached  himself,  and  soon  indeed 
shared  with  his  own  elder  brother  Anthony,  the  earl's  most 
private  confidence.  Valuable  advisers  were  they  to  their  rash 
patron,  and  a  valuable  servant  of  the  nation  did  Francis  Bacon 
bid  fair  to  become,  when,  in  November,  1592,  he  entered 
parliament  as  one  of  the  knights  of  the  shire  for  Middlesex. 
His  first  speech,  in  February  following,  contained  an  urgent 
pleading  for  improvements  in  the  law ;  in  another  address, 
delivered  in  March,  he  resisted,  with  exceeding  boldness  as 
well  as  force  of  reason,  the  immediate  levying  of  an  unpopu- 
lar subsidy  to  which  the  House  had  already  consented. 
The  young  lawyer's  exposition  of  unpleasant  truths  gave 
deep  offence  to  the  queen.  His  uncle  and  the  lord-keeper 
were  both  commissioned  to  convey  to  him  the  assurance  of 

ill  my  mind,  as  it  cannot  be  removed And  if  your  lordship 

will  not  cairi/  me  on,  I  will  not  do  as  Anaxagoras  did,  who  reduced 
himself  with  contemplation  into  voluntary  poverty ;  but  this  I  will 
do,  —  1  will  sell  the  inheritance  that  I  have,  and  purchase  some  lease  of 
quick  revenue,  or  some  office  of  gain,  that  sliall  be  executed  bi/  deputy ;  and 
so  give  over  all  care  of  service,  and  become  some  sorry  bookmaker,  or  a  true 
pioneer  in  that  mine  of  truth,  which,  he  said,  lay  so  deep." —  (Calaba,  p.  18. 
Bacon's  Works,  Vol.  XII.  p.  6,  7,  Montagu's  edit.) 


FRANCIS    BACON.  41 

the  royal  displeasure ;  and  the  two  humble,  nay,  crouching 
letters  of  apology,  still  extant,  in  which  he  entreated  those 
ministers  to  procure  his  pardon,  did  not  forbode  much  inde- 
pendence in  his  subsequent  conduct.  We  do  not,  indeed, 
hear  Bacon  named  as  a  champion  of  popular  rights. 

In  the  year  1594,  Sir  Edward  Coke  being  made  attorney- 
general,  the  solicitorship  became  vacant ;  and  Bacon's  appli- 
cation for  the  office  was  strenuously  supported  by  Essex. 
But  all  efforts  were  in  vain.  The  powerful  kinsmen  were 
colder  than  ever  towards  one  who  had  chosen  another  patron. 
The  lord-keeper,  Puckering,  acted  in  a  manner  which  drew 
on  him  a  spirited  rebuke  from  the  candidate.  The  queen 
hesitated,  coquetted,  told  Essex  that  his  friend,  though  witty, 
eloquent,  and  in  some  branches  learned,  Avas  a  showy  lawyer 
rather  than  a  profound  one.  After  a  delay  of  many  months 
the  place  was  given  to  a  plodding  sergeant,  and  Bacon's 
generous  patron,  vexed  at  the  disappointment  of  his  hopes, 
sought  to  console  both  him  and  himself  by  a  gift  equally 
munificent  and  delicate.  Bacon  received  from  him  an  estate 
at  Twickenham,  worth  about  eighteen  hundred  pounds.  The 
present,  in  all  likelihood,  came  very  seasonably ;  for  he  ap- 
pears to  have  been  already  involved  in  those  pecuniai-y 
embarrassments  from  which  he  was  never  afterwards  com- 
pletely able  to  extricate  himself.  He  was  obliged  to  sell 
the  land  which  Essex  had  given  him ;  two  years  later  he 
was  arrested  in  the  street  for  a  debt  of  three  hundred 
pounds;  and  among  the  Lord  Chancellor  Ellesmere's  pa- 
pers, recently  published,  there  is  a  curious  acknowledg- 
ment, granted  in  1604,  for  a  pledge  in  security  of  an  ad- 
vance of  fifty  pounds  to  him.  These  reasons  offer  the  only 
apology  for  the  addresses  which,  about  the  time  of  his  arrest, 
he  paid  to  a  wealthy  and  shrewish  widow,  who,  fortunately 
for  him,  preferred  his  professional  brother  and  personal 
enemy,  Sir  Edward  Coke.    In  the  mean  time  his  legal  repu- 

I  tation  continued  to  increase,  and  his  parliamentary  exertions 

f  4* 


42  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

were  unremitted,  though  altogether  free  from  that  independ- 
ence which  once  characterized  them.  We  thus  trace  Bacon 
down  to  his  thirty-ninth  year,  pausing  only  to  remark,  that 
two  years  earlier,  that  is,  in  1597,  his  celebrated  Essuys 
were  first  published.  Although  merely  the  skeleton  of  what 
they  afterwards  became,  these  compositions  gained  high  i-ep- 
utation  for  their  author,  not  only  at  home,  but  also  on  the 
continent. 

After  this,  the  first  step  in  Bacon's  literary  career,  we 
approach  what  is  the  most  painful  task  of  his  biographer,  a 
dark  page  of  his  history,  over  which  no  ingenuity  has  ever 
been  able  to  throw  a  veil  thick  enough  to  disguise  its  foul- 
ness. We  have  seen  him  the  friend,  the  adviser,  the  grate- 
ful vassal  of  Essex;  we  are  now  to  behold  him  deserting 
his  benefactor,  assisting  to  destroy  him,  standing  forth  in  the 
face  of  the  world  as  his  enemy  and  accuser.  The  philoso- 
pher's latest  biographer  has  pronounced  his  conduct  in  this 
matter  to  be  honorable  and  praiseworthy ;  and  to  his  pages 
we  must  refer  those  who  are  curious  to  canvass  arguments 
of  which  we  ourselves  are  unable  to  discover  the  force. 
Bacon,  unfortunately  for  himself,  had  lately  risen  much  in 
royal  favor,  and  been  greatly  trusted  and  employed.  Ac- 
cordingly, in  the  first  stages  of  Essex's  decline,  he  had  to 
act  a  double  part,  —  now  offering  to  his  patron  advices 
which  were  but  seldom  followed,  now  seeking  excuses  to 
pacify  the  queen's  rising  displeasure.  His  natural  inclina- 
tion for  temporizing,  the  success  which  had  hitherto  attended 
liis  cautious  policy,  the  honest  wish  to  serve  his  generous 
friend, —  all  these  reasons  may  have  concurred  in  tempting 
him  to  embark  in  the  dangerous  channel.  But  the  sunken 
rocks  soon  encompassed  him,  and  shipwreck  was  unavoidable. 
Alienation  either  from  Elizabeth  or  from  Essex  speedily  ap- 
peared to  be  the  necessary  result  of  the  position  into  which 
the  parties  were  coming.  Bacon  had  not  the  courage  to  take 
the  nobler  part,  and  place  himself  by  the  side  of  his  falling 


FRANCIS    BACON.  43 

friend,  at  the  probable  expense  of  all  his  worldly  prospects. 
Suspicion  and  estrangement  soon  took  the  place  of  affection- 
ate confidence ;  and  the  trust  reposed  in  him  by  the  Queen 
was  purchased  by  the  bitter  consciousness  that  Essex  re- 
garded him  as  treacherous  and  hostile.  A  more  degrading 
task  was  yet  to  come.  The  first  trial  of  the  earl,  in  ref- 
erence to  his  conduct  in  Ireland,  was  determined  upon  ; 
and  Bacon's  enemies  asserted  that  he  offered  himself  to  act 
as  one  of  the  counsel  for  the  prosecution.  In  that  memoir 
in  defence  of  his  conduct  which  he  wrote  in  the  next  reign, 
and  which  proves  satisfactorily  nothing  but  his  own  humili- 
ating consciousness  of  guilt,  he  states  as  to  this  matter  what 
wa^  doubtless  the  truth.  It  had  been  resolved  that  the 
proceedings  against  the  rash  earl  should  not  be  carried  out 
to  his  destruction,  but  should  only  disarm  and  discourage 
him ;  and,  a  hint  being  conveyed  to  Bacon  that  the  Queen 
had  not  determined  whether  he  should  be  employed  pro- 
fessionally in  the  affair  or  not,  he  thought  proper  to  address 
to  her  "  two  or  three  words  of  compliment,"  intimating  that 
if  she  would  dispense  with  his  services  he  would  consider  it 
as  one  of  her  greatest  favors,  but  that  otherwise  he  knew 
his  duty,  and  would  not  allow  any  private  obligations  to 
interfere  with  what  he  owed  to  her  majesty.  All  this  was, 
he  adds,  "  a  respect  no  man  that  had  his  wits  could  have 
omitted."  Bacon,  in  short,  still  wished  to  serve  two  masters  ; 
but  he  had  now  placed  himself  at  the  mercy  of  those  from 
whom  he  had  no  forbearance  to  expect.  The  Queen, 
suspicious  and  moody,  was  jealous  of  his  attachment  to 
Essex,  and  bent  on  compelling  him  to  do  her  service  unre- 
servedly ;  her  advisers,  or  some  of  them,  were  glad  to  have 
the  odium  of  the  earl's  destruction  shared  with  them  by  one 
so  distinguished,  who  had,  likewise,  been  the  victim's  friend. 
It  was  intimated  that  Bacon's  services  could  not  be  dis-' 
pensed  with ;  but  he  tells  us,  (and  he  probably  repeats  only 
what  his  masters  tried  to  make  him  believe,)  that  it  was 


44  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

resolved  his  share  in  the  prosecution  should  be  confined  to 
matters  which  could  not  do  his  unfortunate  patron  any- 
serious  harm.  Essex's  private  censure  by  the  privy-council 
followed ;  and,  while  he  was  committed  to  custody-at-large, 
Bacon  incurred,  by  his  appearance  against  him,  an  obloquy 
of  which  his  letters  show  him  to  have  been  painfully  sen- 
sible. In  a  few  months  the  earl's  open  rebellion  took  place ; 
he  was  seized,  and  put  upon  his  trial  in  February,  1601, 
along  with  Lord  Southampton  ;  and  on  this  occasion,  when 
his  life  was  at  stake,  Bacon  again  appeared  as  one  of  the 
counsel  for  the  prosecution,  and  delivered  a  speech  of  which 
there  is  extant  an  imperfect  account.  The  language  is 
harsh,  but  less  so  than  addresses  of  the  kind  used  to  be.  in 
those  days.  The  topics  are  oratorical,  and,  as  it  has  been 
justly  remai-ked,  are  less  calculated  for  insuring  conviction, 
(which  indeed  was  certain,)  than  for  placing  the  conduct  of 
the  prisoner  in  an  odious  light,  and  hardening  the  Queen's 
heart  against  him;  and,  although  it  would  be  rash  to  judge 
of  the  real  temper  of  the  harangue  without  knowing  more 
of  its  contents,  yet  what  w^e  possess  contains  much  that 
cannot  possibly  be  explained  so  as  to  do  credit  to  the 
speaker.  We  know,  likewise,  how  the  object  of  the  attack 
received  it.  At  one  place  Essex  interrupted  his  treacherous 
friend,  and  called  upon  him  to  say,  as  a  witness,  whether  he 
had  not,  in  their  confidential  intercourse,  admitted  the  truth 
of  those  excuses  which  he  now  affected  to  treat  as  frivolous 
and  false.  Essex  was  convicted ;  and  between  his  sentence 
and  execution.  Bacon  admits  in  his  exculpatory  memoir  that 
he  made  no  attempt  to  save  him  ;  seeing  the  queen  but  once, 
as  he  says,  and  on  that  occasion  venturing  to  do  nothing 
further  than  pronouncing  a  few  commonplaces  on  the  bles- 
sed uses  of  mercy.  But  not  even  here  was  the  disgrace  to 
end,  in  which  the  timid  man  of  the  world  had  steeped  him- 
self. The  act  which  had  cost  Elizabeth's  own  heart  so 
much,  had  also  made  her  unpopular ;  a  defence  of  the  royal 


FRANCIS   BACON.  45 

policy  in  regard  to  Essex  was  thought  necessary ;  and  the 
pen  that  drew  it  up,  under  the  direction  of  the  Queen's 
advisers,  was,  we  are  grieved  to  find,  no  other  than  Bacon's. 
The  "  Declaration  of-  the  Practices  and  Treasons  attempted 
and  committed  by  Robert  Earl  of  Essex  "  was  printed,  and 
is  extant :  "  a  performance,"  says  a  late  writer,  "  in  defence 
of  which,  in  the  succeeding  reign.  Bacon  had  not  a  word  to 
say;  a  performance  abounding  in  expressions  which  no 
generous  enemy  would  have  employed  respecting  a  man 
who  had  so  dearly  expiated  his  offences."  With  this  humili- 
ating act  of  service  we  may  consider  Bacon's  public  life 
under  Elizabeth  as  closed. 

The  reign  of  her  successor  was,  from  its  commencement, 
a  more  auspicious  era  for  men  of  letters  and  philosophy, 
with  whom  James,  amidst  all  his  imbecility  and  coldheart- 
edness,  was  not  by  any  means  ill  fitted  to  sympathize. 
Bacon's  learning  was  no  longer  open  to  sneers  and  con- 
tempt ;  his  uncle  was  dead ;  his  hunchback  cousin,  Robert 
Cecil,  who  soon  became  Earl  of  Salisbury,  was  kept  in 
check  by  his  hereditary  prudence;  and  Coke,  who  had 
insulted  our  philosophic  lawyer  grossly,  as  he  insulted  every 
one  who  was  defenceless  and  within  his  reach,  was  in  a  few 
years  removed  to  the  head  of  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas. 
From  the  first  hour  of  James's  reign.  Bacon  lost  no  oppor- 
tunity of  recommending  himself  to  favor ;  but  the  first 
mark  of  it  which  he  received,  was  one  of  which  he  neither 
was  nor  could  have  been  proud,  and  which,  nevertheless,  he 
thought  proper  to  solicit.  When  the  king  called  upon  all 
persons  possessing  forty  pounds  a  year  in  land  to  be 
knighted,  or  to  compound  for  a  dispensation  from  the  honor, 
one  effect  of  this  scheme  for  filling  the  royal  coffers  was, 
that  three  members  of  Bacon's  mess  at  Gray's  Inn  ap- 
peared among  the  new  knights.  That  love  of  external  dis- 
tinctions which  was  the  fatal  weakness  of  his  nature,  was 
called  into  play,  and  the  philosopher  was  disconcerted   by 


46  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  titles  of  his  companions,  beside  whom  he  sat  untitled. 
At  the  same  time,  likewise,  he  had,  in  his  own  words, 
"  found  out  an  alderman's  daughter,  a  handsome  maiden,  to 
his  liking ; "  and  the  alderman's  daughter  was  likely  to  be 
more  easily  won  if  her  admirer  could  offer  her  a  showy 
accession  of  rank.  Accordingly,  Bacon  wrote  to  his  cousin 
Cecil,  stating  his  desire  to  obtain,  for  these  reasons,  "  this 
divulged  and  almost  prostituted  title  of  knighthood."  The 
request  was  granted,  but  was  immediately  followed  by 
another.  Bacon,  heartily  ashamed  of  the  company  in  which 
he  was  to  appear,  entreated  that  he  might  be  knighted 
alone ;  "  that,"  as  he  says,  "  the  manner  might  be  such  as 
might  grace  one,  since  the  matter  will  not."  This  petition 
was  refused ;  and,  on  the  day  of  the  coronation,  Francis 
Bacon  was  one  of  three  hundred  who  received  the  empty 
honor.  Soon  afterwards,  being  forty-two  years  old,  he  was 
married  to  the  alderman's  daughter,  Alice  Barnham,  who 
brought  him  a  considerable  fortune,  but  seems,  in  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  at  all  events,  to  have  contributed  little  to 
his  domestic  happiness. 

These  details  are  in  themselves  trifles  ;  but  they  are 
strange  illustrations  of  the  mixed  character  of  one  who, 
while  thus  soliciting  honors  of  which  he  was  half  ashamed, 
and  eager  for  public  distinctions,  which,  though  more  solid, 
were  likewise  more  dangerous,  was  not  only  respected  and 
distinguished  as  a  lawyer  and  a  statesman,  as  an  orator,  a 
scholar,  and  an  author,  but  was  occupied,  during  his  few 
hours  of  leisure,  in  completing  the  most  valuable  system  of 
philosophy  that  had  ever  been  expounded  in  modern  Eu- 
rope. Smaller  compositions,  submitted  to  his  friends, 
showed  from  time  to  time  the  progress  of  the  great  work 
which  he  had  marked  out  as  the  business  of  his  life ;  and 
among  these  was  the  treatise  on  the  Advancement  of  Learn- 
ing, published  in  1605,  in  its  author's  forty-fiftli  year. 
Political  tracts  alteniated  with  these  philosophical  specula- 
tions. 


FBANCIS   BACON.  47 

In  the  mean  time  his  public  reputation,  and  his  favor 
with  the  king  increased  and  kept  pace  with  each  other.  In 
parliament  he  was  actively  useful  in  forwarding  favorite  and 
really  good  measures  of  the  court,  such  as  the  union  of 
England  and  Scotland,  and  the  proposed  consolidation  of 
the  laws  of  the  countries.  Nor  was  he  less  usefully  em- 
ployed in  taking  a  prominent  part  in  the  select  committee 
of  the  house  upon  grievapces  ;  and  in  his  skilful  hands,  the 
report  became  all  that  the  rules  could  have  wished,  without 
exciting  any  general  feeling  against  the  framers.  In  1604, 
he  was  made  king's  counsel  in  ordinary,  with  a  salary  of 
loi'ty  pounds,  to  which  was  added  a  pension  of  sixty  pounds. 
In  1607,  upon  Coke's  promotion  to  the  bench.  Bacon  was 
appointed  solicitor-general ;  and  he  became  attorney-gen- 
eral in  1612.  His  treatises  concerning  improvements  in 
the  law,  and  the  principles  of  legislation,  are  more  credita- 
ble testimonies  to  the  value  of  his  official  services,  than  some 
others  of  his  acts ;  such  as  the  scheme,  first  tried  in  the 
session  of  1614,  for  securing  majorities  in  the  House  of 
Commons  by  organized  corruption,  the  invention  of  which 
has  been  recently  traced  to  him,  although  in  his  place  in 
parliament  he  ridiculed  those  who  asserted  that  such  a  pro- 
ject had  ever  been  formed.  Bacon  was  likewise  officially 
the  prosecutor  of  Oliver  St.  John,  of  Owen  and  Talbot,  and 
of  the  old  clergyman,  Peacham,  who  was  examined  in  the 
Tower  under  torture,  the.  founder  of  modern  philosophy 
being  present,  and  putting  the  questions.  In  Peacham's 
case  there  was  even  an  attempt,  actively  promoted  by 
Bacon,  for  securing  a  conviction  by  previous  conference 
with  the  judges ;  a  plot  which,  though  at  length  successful, 
was  defeated  for  a  time  by  the  sturdy  resistance  of  Coke,  a 
tyrant  to  his  inferiors,  but  a  staunch  opponent  of  encroach- 
ments upon  judicial  independence.  Bacon's  last  remarkable 
appearance  as  attorney-general,  was  in  the  noted  trial  of  the 
earl  and  countess  of  Somerset,  and  their  accomplices,  for 


48  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  murder  of  Sir  Thomas  Overbury;  and,  whatever  the 
foul  secret  may  have  been,  which  was  involved  in  that 
fiendish  intrigue,  Bacon's  letters  to  the  king  leave  little 
reason  for  doubting  that  he  at  least  was  in  possession  of  it. 
His  conduct  in  this  matter,  however,  gained  him  great  and 
deserved  credit. 

The  fall  of  Somerset  was  followed  by  the  rise  of  the  new 
favorite,  Villiers,  who  had  already  profited  by  his  intimacy 
with  the  attorney-general,  and  by  the  sound  advices  with 
which  the  cautious  statesman  endeavored  to  fortify  his  youth 
and  inexperience.  The  worthless  Buckingham,  destined  in 
a  few  years  to  be  the  instrument  of  retribution  for  Bacon's 
past  desertion  of  Essex,  did  not  for  some  time  forget  obliga- 
tions, of  which  he  was  probably  wise  enough  to  desire  a 
continuance.  In  1616,  Bacon  having  been  sworn  of  the 
privy-council,  relinquished  the  bar,  but  retained  his  chamber 
practice.  In  the  spring  of  1617,  the  Lord  Chancellor 
Ellesmere  resigned  the  seals,  which  were  immediately  deliv- 
ered to  Bacon,  with  the  title  of  lord-keeper.  In  January  of 
the  succeeding  year,  he  was  made  lord  high  chancellor  of 
England,  and  in  July  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  of 
Verulam.  His  higher  title  of  Viscount  St.  Albans  was  not 
conferred  on  him  till  1621.  Without  neglecting  his  political 
duties,  he  proceeded  zealously  to  the  judicial  functions  of 
his  office,  in  which  arrears  of  business  had  accumulated 
through  the  infirmities  of  his .  aged  predecessor.  "  This 
day,"  wrote  he  to  Buckingham  in  June,  1617,  "I  have 
made  even  with  the  business  of  the  kingdom  for  commoc 
justice ;  not  one  cause  unheard ;  the  lawyers  drawn  dry  of 
dU  the  motions  they  were  to  make  ;  not  one  petition  unan- 
swered. And  this,  I  think,  could  not  be  said  in  our  age 
before.  Thus  I  speak,  not  out  of  ostentation,  but  out  of 
gladness,  when  I  have  done  my  duty.  I  know  men  think  I 
cannot  continue,  if  I  should  thus  oppress  myself  with  busi- 
ness ;  but   that  account  is   made.     The  duties  of  life  are 


FRANCIS    BACON.  49 

more  *than  life ;  and  if  I  die  now  I  shall  die  before  the 
world  be  weary  of  me."  And  the  man  who  wrote  in  this 
solemn,  moral  strain,  the  man  whose  writings  throughout 
are  an  echo  of  the  same  lofty  expression  of  the  sense  of 
duty,  was  also  the  man  who,  in  less  than  four  years  after  his 
elevation  to  the  seat  of  justice,  was  to  be  hurled  from  it  in 
disgrace,  branded  as  a  bribed  and  dishonest  man.  "  At  York 
House,"  says  Mr.  Montague,  "  on  the  22d  of  January,  1621, 
he  celebrated  his  sixtieth  birthday,  surrounded  by  his  ad- 
mirers and  friends,  among  whom  was  Ben  Jonson,  who 
composed  a  poem  in  honor  of  the  day. 

Hail,  happy  genius  of  this  ancient  pile  ! 
How  comes  it  all  things  so  about  thee  smile  — 
The  fire,  the  wine,  the  men  —  and  in  the  midst 
Thou  stand'st,  aS  if  some  mystery  thou  didst  ? 

•'  Had  the  poet  been  a  prophet,  he  would  have  described 
the  good  genius  of  the  mansion  not  exulting,  but  dejected, 
humble,  and  about  to  depart  forever." 

He  had  now  arrived  at  the  conviction  that  his  worship  of 
the  powers  of  this  world  had  made  it  impossible  for  him  to 
consummate  the  great  sacrifice  which,  during  his  lifetime, 
he  had  hoped  to  lay  upon  the  altar  of  philosophy.  Aged 
sixty  years,  and  immersed  in  difficult  and  anxious  business, 
he  felt  that  his  great  Restoration  of  Science,  his  Instauralio 
Magna,  could  not  be  completed  ;  and  he  therefore  hastened 
to  give  to  the  world  an  outline  of  its  plan,  coupled  with  a 
filling  up  of  one  section  of  the  outline.  "  I  number  my 
days,"  wrote  he,  "  and  would  have  it  saved."  The  Novum 
Organum,  the  result  of  this  determination,  was  published  in 
October,  1 620  ;  and  the  fame  which  it  earned  for  its  author 
throughout  Europe,  was  in  its  rising  splendor  when  his  fall 
took  place. 

The  tempest  which  was  soon  to  overturn  the  throne  was 
already  lowering  on  the  horizon  ;  and  its  earliest  mutterings 

5 


50  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

•were  heard  in  the  important  parliament  which  met  on  the 
30th  of  January,  1621.    With  most  of  the  complaints,  whose 
investigation  the  king  and  Buckingham  feared  so  much,  we 
have  here  little  to  do :  but  two  gross  abuses  there  were,  in 
which  the  lord  chancellor  was  personally  implicated.    He  had 
passed  the  infamous  patents  of  monopoly,  of  which  the  worst 
were   those   held   by   Sir   Giles   Mompesson,   (Massinger's 
Overreach,)   and   by  Sir   Francis  Michell,  and   shared  by 
Buckingham's  brothers  and  dependents  :  and  he  had  allowed 
himself  to  be  influenced  in  his  judicial  sentences  by  recom- 
mendations of  the  favorite.     The  first  of  these  faults  admit- 
ted of  palliation ;  the  second  was  susceptible  of  none ;  but 
both  were  real  and  heavy  ofiences.     Yet  neither  was  made 
an  article  of  charge  against  Bacon.     He  was  attacked  upon 
a  different  ground.     Buckingham,  by  the  advice  of  his  new 
counsellor  Williams,  then  dean  of  Westminster,  abandoned 
the  monopolists  to  their  fate,  contenting  himself  with  send- 
ing his  own  brothers  out  of  the  country,  and  with  afterwards 
publicly  denying  that  he  had  any  hand  in  assisting  their 
escape.     But  the  storm  was  not  allayed.     In  March,  the 
pai'liamentary  committee  appointed  to  inquire  into  the  exist- 
ence of  abuses  in  the  courts  of  justice,  reported  that  abuses 
did  exist,  and   that   the   person  against  whom   they   were 
alleged,  was  the  lord  chancellor  himself.     Two  cases  were 
specified,  of  suitors  named  Aubrey  and  Egerton,  of  whom 
the  one  had  given  the  chancellor  one  hundred  pounds,  the 
other  four  hundred  pounds,  and  against  whom  he  had  de- 
cided, notwithstanding  these  presents.     Two  days  after  this 
report  was  presented.  Lord  St.  Albans  presided  in  the  House 
of  Lords  for  the  last  time.     New  accusations  accumulated 
against  him ;  and,  alarmed  in   mind,  and  sick  in  body,  he 
retired  from  the  house,  and  addressed  to  the  peers  a  letter, 
praying  for  a  suspension  of  their  opinion,  until  he  should 
have  undergone  a  fair  trial.     In  no  long  time  the  charges 
against  him  amounted  to  twenty-three ;  and  Williams,  again 


FBANCIS    BACON.  51 

called  to  the  councils  of  Buckingham  and  his  master,  advised 
that  no  risks  should  be  incurred  upon  his  account.  A  pro- 
rogation of  parliament  ensued,  during  which  an  interview 
took  place  between  the  king  and  the  chancellor  ;  and  James, 
instead  of  encouraging  his  accused  servant  in  the  resolution 
he  had  expressed  of  defending  himself,  recommended  "  that 
he  should  submit  himself  to  the  House  of  Peers,  and  that 
upon  his  princely  word  he  would  restore  him  again,  if  they 
in  their  honors  should  not  be  sensible  of  his  merits."  On 
the  24th  of  April  there  was  presented  to  the  Lords,  by  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  a  supplication  and  submission  of  the  lord 
chancellor,  in  which  the  most  important  passage  is  the  fol- 
lowing :  "  It  resteth,  therefore,  that,  without  fig  leaves,  I  do 
ingenuously  confess  and  acknowledge  that,  having  under- 
stood the  particulars  of  the  charge,  not  formally  from  the 
house,  but  enough  to  inform  my  conscience  and  memory,  I 
find  matter  sufficient  and  full,  both  to  move  me  to  desert  my 
defence,  and  to  move  your  lordships  to  condemn  and  cen- 
sure me.  Neither  will  I  trouble  your  lordships  by  singling 
those  particulars,  which  I  think  may  fall  off. 

Quid  te  cxempta  juvat  spinis  de  pluribus  unal 

Neither  will  I  prompt  your  lordships  to  observe  upon  the 
proofs,  where  they  come  not  home,  or  the  scruples  touching 
the  cx'edits  of  the  witnesses ;  neitlier  will  I  represent  unto 
your  lordships  how  far  a  defence  might,  in  diverse  things, 
extenuate  the  offence,  in  respect  of  the  time  or  manner  of 
the  gift,  or  the  like  circumstances  ;  but  only  leave  these 
things  to  spring  out  of  your  own  noble  thoughts,  and  obser- 
vations jof  the  evidence  and  examinations  themselves,  and 
charitably  to  wind  about  the  particulars  of  the  charge  here 
and  there,  as  God  shall  put  it  in  your  minds  ;  and  so  submit 

myself  wholly  to  your  piety  and  grace And,  there 

fore,  my  humble  suit  to  your  lordships  is,  that  my  penitent 
submission  may  be  my  sentence,  and  the  loss  of  the  seal  my 


52  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

punishment ;  and  that  your  lordships  will  spare  any  further 
sentence,  but  recommend  me  to  his  majesty's  grace  and  par- 
don for  all  that  is  past."  But  not  even  thus  was  the  humili- 
ation complete.  The  house  resolved  that  the  submission 
was  not  specific,  nor  unequivocal  enough  to  be  satisfactory; 
and  that  he  should  be  required  to  furnish  categorical  an- 
swers to  the  several  articles  of  charge,  which  accordingly 
were  sent  to  him,  being  numbered  under  twenty-three  heads. 
The  specific  answers  which  he  returned  were  prefaced  and 
followed  by  these  declarations  :  "  Upon  advised  considera- 
tion of  the  charge,  descending  into  my  own  conscience,  and 
calling  my  memory  to  account,  so  far  as  I  am  able,  I  do 
plainly  and  ingenuously  confess  that  I  am  guilty  of  corrup- 
tion, and  do  renounce  all  defence,  and  put  myself  upon  the 

grace  and  mercy  of  your  lordships This  declaration 

I  have  made  to  your  lordships  with  a  sincere  mind  ;  humbly 
craving  that,  if  there  should  be  any  mistake,  your  lordships 
would  impute  it  to  want  of  memory,  and  not  to  any  desire 
of  mine  to  obscure  truth,  or  palliate  any  thing.  For  I  do 
again  confess,  that  in  the  points  charged  upon  me,  although 
tliey  should  be  taken  as  myself  have  declared  them,  there  is 
a  great  deal  of  corruption  and  neglect,  for  which  I  am 
heartily  and  penitently  sorry,  and  submit  myself  to  the 
judgment,  grace,  and  mercy  of  the  court.  —  For  extenua- 
tion, I  will  use  none,  concerning  the  matters  themselves : 
only  it  may  please  your  lordships,  out  of  your  nobleness,  to 
cast  your  eyes  of  compassion  upon  my  person  and  estate. 
I  was  never  noted  for  an  avaricious  man,  and  the  apostle 
saith,  that  covetousness  is  the  root  of  all  evil.  I  hope  also 
that  your  lordships  do  the  rather  find  me  in  the  state  of 
grace ;  for  that,  in  all  these  particulars,  there  are  few  or 
none  tliat  are  not  almost  two  years  old,  whereas  those  that 
have  a  habit  of  corruption  do  commonly  wax  worse  and 
worse ;  so  that  it  hath  pleased  God  to  prepare  me,  by  pre- 
cedent degrees  of  amendment,  to  my   present   penitency. 


FRANCIS   BACON.  53 

And  for  my  estate,  it  is  so  mean  and  poor,  as  my  care  is 
now  chiefly  to  satisfy  my  debts." 

This  declaration  being  read,  a  deputation  of  the  lords  was 
appointed  to  wait  on  the  unfortunate  man  in  tlie  chamber 
where  he  sat  deserted  and  alone,  and  to  demand  whether  it 
was  his  own  hand  that  was  subscribed  to  it.  Among  them 
was  Shakespeare's  friend  Lord  Southampton,  who  had  been 
condemned  to  death  along  with  Essex.  Bacon  replied  to 
them,  "  it  is  my  act,  my  hand,  my  heart.  I  beseech  your 
lordships  be  merciful  to  a  broken  reed."  Again  the  fallen 
judge  prayed  the  king  to  intercede  for  him  ;  and  again  the 
king,  his  haughty  son,  and  their  thankless  favorite,  refused 
to  interfere.  On  the  3d  of  May,  1621,  the  lords  pronounced 
a  sentence  which,  stamping  him  at  all  events  with  indeUble 
disgrace,  was  terrible  even  in  the  punishment  which  it  actu- 
ally inflicted.  Bacon,  found  guilty  upon  his  own  confession, 
was  sentenced  to  a  fine  of  forty  thousand  pounds,  and  to 
confinement  in  the  Tower  during  the  King's  pleasure  ;  he 
was  pronounced  incapable  of  public  employments  and  of  sit- 
ting in  parliament,  and  prohibited  from  coming  within  the 
verge  of  the  court.  His  judges  indeed  knew  that  the  harsher 
part  of  the  sentence  would  not  be  executed.  Accordingly, 
though  committed  immediately  to  the  Tower,  he  was  re- 
leased after  two  days'  imprisonment ;  and  the  fine  was  re- 
mitted in  the  course  of  the  autumn,  although  it  is  a  fact  dis- 
honorable (in  the  circumstances)  to  his  enemy  and  succes- 
sor, Bishop  Williams,  that  the  pardon  was  stayed  at  the  seal, 
•  till  the  king  in  person  ordered  it  to  be  passed. 

Fi'om  the  whole  tenor  of  this  afflicting  history,  it  is  plain 
that  Bacon's  memory  cannot  be  cleared  from  very  heavy 
imputations.  Indeed,  the  case  against  him  may  be  stated, 
if  we  push  it  to  the  utmost,  in  an  alternative  form  which  ad- 
mits of  no  honorable  solution.  Convicted  of  corruption,  as 
he  was,  upon  his  own  confession,  we  must  either  believe  the 
confession,  and  pronounce  him  a  corrupt  judge,  or  we  must 
6* 


54  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

disbelieve  it,  and  pronounce  him  a  liar.  Most  of  his  biogra- 
phers adopt  the  former  alternative.  Mr.  Montagu's  elabo- 
rate defence  is  really  founded  on  something  which  is  not 
very  far  distant  from  the  latter.  And  humiliating  as  either 
supposition  is,  we  have,  for  our  own  part,  no  hesitation  in 
believing  that  the  truth  lies  nearest  to  that  theory  which  im- 
putes to  the  unhappy  chancellor  insincerity  and  cowardice, 
rather  then  wilful  corruption.  "We  cannot  indeed  go  so  far 
as  his  enthusiastic  biographer,  who  insists  that  the  acts 
charged  and  confessed,  were  in  themselves,  if  not  quite  free 
from  moral  blame,  yet  palUated,  not  only  by  general  usage, 
but  by  intentions  strictly  honest ;  —  that  he  was  sacrificed 
by  the  king  and  the  king's  minion,  although,  if  he  had  stood 
a  trial,  he  could  have  obtained  a  full  acquittal.  This,  we 
must  venture  to  think,  is  a  position  which,  if  maintained 
to  its  whole  extent,  cannot  be  even  plausibly  defended. 
Neither,  as  we  must  also  believe,  is  justice  done  by  that  other 
view,  which  has  been  stated  more  recently  with  such  force 
and  eloquence,  that  the  case  was  one  of  gross  bribery,  gross 
and  glaring  even  when  compared  with  the  ordinary  course 
of  corruption  in  these  times  ;  a  case  so  bad,  that  the  court, 
anxious,  for  their  own  sakes,  to  save  the  culprit,  dared  not 
to  utter  a  word  in  extenuation.  ^ 

The  fact  which  possesses  the  greatest  importance  for  the 
elucidation  of  this  unfortunate  story,  is  that  which  has  been 
founded  on  so  elaborately  by  Mr.  Montagu,  and  lately  illus- 
trated further  by  another  writer  for  a  different  purpose.'' 
The  custom  of  giving  presents  was  then  general,  not  to  say  , 
universal  in  England.  It  extended  much  further  than  the 
epices  of  the  French  parliament ;  for  the  gifts  were  not 
fixed  in  amount,  nor,  though  always  expected,  were  they 

1  Montagu's  Life  of  Bacon,  Works,  "Vol.  XVI.  part  I.  p.  313-377, 
note.    Edinburgh  Review,  Vol.  LXV.  page  50-63.    (Mr.  Macaulay.) 

'^  Edinburgh  Review,  No.  143,  p.  38,  39.  Life  of  Raleigh  (Professor 
Napier.) 


FRANCIS    BACON.  55 

recognized  as  lawful  perquisites.    The  advisers  of  the  crown 
I    •  received  presents  from  those  who  asked  for  favors :  the  sover- 

eign received  presents  from  those  who  approached  the 
throne  on  occasions  of  pomp  and  festivity.  Both  these  im- 
proprieties were  not  only  universal  but  unchallenged.  Fur- 
ther, judges  received  presents;  and  under  certain  conditions, 
—  when,  for  instance,  the  giver  had  not  been,  and  was  not 
likely  to  be,  a  suitor  in  the  judge's  court,  or  even  when, 
though  he  had  been  a  suitor,  the  cause  was  ended,  —  this 
dangerous  abuse  was  scarcely  less  common  than  the  other, 
and  scarcely  regarded  in  a  more  unfavorable  liglit.  That  it 
was  wrong,  all  men  felt ;  but  we  fear  there  were  few  indeed, 
who,  like  Sir  Thomas  More,  refused  absolutely  to  profit  by 
it.  High  as  Coke  himself  stood  for  honesty,  and  well  as 
he  deserved  praise  for  this  (almost  his  only  redeeming  vir- 
tue), we  doubt  whether  his  judicial  character  could  have 
emerged  quite  untainted  from  a  scrutiny  led  by  common  in- 
formers, discarded  servants,  and  disappointed  litigants,  like 
that  to  which  his  unfortunate  rival  was  subjected.  Pure 
Bacon  was  not ;  purer  than  he,  several  of  his  contempora- 
ries probably  were  ;  but  we  believe  him  to  have  been  merely 
one  of  the  offenders,  and  very  far  indeed  from  being  the  worst, 
in  an  age  when  corruption  and  profligacy,  senatorial,  judicial, 
and  administrative,  were  almost  at  the  acme  of  that  excess 
which  an  indignant  nation  speedily  rose  to  exterminate  and 
avenge. 

A  comparison  of  the  charges  in  detail,  and  of  the  evi- 
dence adduced,  with  Bacon's  articulate  answers,  as  to  the 
candor  of  which  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt,  would  really  ex- 
hibit little  or  nothing  which,  after  fair  allowances  are  made 
for  imperfect  information  and  other  causes  of  obscurity, 
would  afford  a  distinct  contradiction  to  the  chancellor's 
own  solemn  averment,  made  in  a  letter  to  the  king  at  an 
early  stage  of  the  investigation.  "  For  the  briberies  and 
gifts  wherewith  I  am  charged,  when  the  book  of  hearts 


56  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

shall  be  opened,  I  hope  I  shall  not  be  found  to  have  the 
troubled  fountain  of  a  corrupt  heart,  in  a  depraved  habit  of 
taking  rewards  to  perfect  justice  ;  howsoever  I  may  be  frail, 
and  partake  of  the  abuses  of  the  times."  While  he  lay  in  the 
Tower,  he  addressed  to  Buckingham  a  letter  containing 
these  expressions :  "  However  I  have  acknowledged  that 
the  sentence  is  just,  and  for  reformation  sake  fit,  I  have 
been  a  trusty,  and  honest,  and  Christ-loving  friend  to  your 
lordship,  and  the  justest  chancellor  that  hath  been  in  the 
five  changes  since  my  father's  time."  This  last  sentence, 
indeed,  when  carefully  weighed,  will  be  found  to  contain 
more  of  truth  than  the  writer  himself  perhaps  intended. 
A  judge  not  altogether  unjust  he  may  have  been,  if  we  com- 
pare him  with  his  contemporaries ;  but  he  was  also  a  trusty, 
and  trusting,  and  servile  friend  of  the  royal  favorite,  and  of 
other  men  in  power.  He  was  a  lover  of  the  pomp  of  the 
world,  to  an  extent  highly  dangerous  for  one  who  had  but 
little  pi-ivate  fortune,  insufficient  official  remuneration,  and 
habits  which  disqualified  him  for  exercising  a  strict  superin- 
tendence over  the  expenses  of  his  household,  or  the  conduct 
of  his  dependents  generally.  His  emoluments  as  chancellor 
did  not  amount  to  three  thousand  pounds  a  year;  and,  im- 
mediately on  his  appointment,  he  had  used  vain  endeavors 
to  have  the  office  put  on  a  more  independent  footing.  His 
servants  habitually  betrayed  both  him  and  the  suitors  ;  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  continually  embarrassed  in  cir- 
cumstances, he  himself  was  only  too  glad  to  receive  the 
customary  gifts  when  they  could  be  taken  with  any  sem- 
blanee  of  propriety.  As  to  his  confession,  while  we  believe 
it  to  be  true  in  every  particular  instance,  we  believe  it  also 
in  its  general  admission  of  corruption  ;  but  we  likewise  be- 
lieve that  the  general  admission  ought  to  have  been  quali- 
fied by  certain  references,  which  would  have  established  the 
truth  of  the  remark  made  by  Bacon  in  his  hour  of  deepest 
Buffering,  that  "  they  upon  whom  the  wall  fell  were  not  the 


FEANCIS   BACON.  57 

greatest  offenders  in  Israel."  And  this,  as  we  conceive  it, 
was  the  danger  which  the  court  were  so  eager  to  avert,  the 
danger  which  filled  the  king  and  Buckingham  with  such  dis- 
may. This  was  their  reason  for  insisting  that  Bacon  should 
sacrifice  his  own  character,  and  abandon  that  line  of  defence 
which  might  not  improbably  have  precipitated  the  revolu- 
tion. Upon  this  assumption,  their  conduct  throughout  is 
intelligible  and  consistent ;  and  although  one  is  reluctant  to 
believe  it,  the  assumption  is  not  contradicted  by  any  thing 
in  the  chancellor's  character.  Lofty  as  may  still  have  been 
his  abstract  notions  of  morality,  his  practical  views  were 
darkened  and  debased  by  his  long  servitude  to  public  ofliice 
in  a  corrupt  age.  The  stain  which,  as  he  well  knew,  the 
sentence  of  the  parliament  would  affix  upon  his  name,  may 
have  seemed  a  light  thing  to  one  who  was  aware  how  the 
same  brand  might  have  been  justly  imprinted  on  almost  every 
eminent  name  in  the  kingdom.  And  again,  neither  Bacon 
nor  his  master,  nor  those  others  who  were  the  royal  advisers, 
were  able  to  comprehend,  in  this  instance,  any  more  than 
elsewhere,  the  spirit  whichjiti^dready  gone  abroad.  They 
did  not  anticipate  the  severity  of  the  sentence  pronounced 
by  the  House  of  Lords ;  still  less  did  they  anticipate  (Bacon 
at  least  did  not,  nor  perhaps  did  Williams)  the  universal 
indignation  which  was  aroused  by  the  fact  that  the  highest 
judge  in  the  realm  had  been  displaced  for  bribery.  The  court 
gained  its  immediate  purpose,  in  removing  to  a  subsequent 
time  the  fatal  struggle  ;  but  there  soon  arrived  the  fulfil- 
ment of  Bacon's  prophecy,  that  the  successful  attack  on  him 
would  be  but  an  encouragement  and  strengthening  to  those 
who  aimed  at  the  throne  itself. 

After  his  release  from  the  Tower,  Bacon,  although 
strangely  anxious  to  continue  in  London,  was  obliged  to 
retire  to  his  paternal  seat  in  Gorhambury,  near  St.  Albans. 
There  he  immediately  commenced  his  History  of  Henry  the 
Seventh,  a  work  displaying  but  too  unequivocal  proofs  of  the 


58  NEW    BIOGRArHIES. 

dejected  lassitude  which  had  crei)t  upon  his  mind.  Early 
next  year  he  offered  himself  unsuccessfully  for  the  Provost- 
ship  of  Eton  College,  and  proceeded  with  other  literary 
undertakings.  These  included  the  completion  of  the  cele- 
brated treatise  De  Augmentis,  an  improvement  of  the 
older  work  on  the  Advancement  of  Learning.  This  was 
the  last  philosophical  treatise  which  he  published ;  although 
the  few  remaining  years  x)f  his  life  were  incessantly  devoted 
to  study  and  composition,  and  gave  birth  to  the  New  Atlan- 
tis, the  Sylva  Sylvarum,  and  other  works  of  less  conse- 
quence. 

Shortly  before  the  king's  death,  he  I'cmitted  the  whole  of 
the  sentence  on  Bacon,  who,  however,  did  not  again  sit  in 
Parliament.  His  health  was  already  broken  ;  and  in  De- 
cember of  that  year,  1625,  he  made  his  will,  in  which, 
although  his  affairs  were  really  in  extreme  confusion,  he 
writes  as  if  he  considered  himself  a  wealthy  man.  In  the 
spring  of  1626,  on  his  way  from  Gray's  Inn  to  Gorhambury, 
he  exposed  himself  to  a  sudden  chill,  by  performing  in  a 
cottage  an  experiment  whic#had  suggested  itself  to  him, 
regarding  the  fitness  of  snow  or  ice  as  a  substitute  for  salt 
for  preserving  dead  flesh.  Unable  to  travel  home,  he  was 
carried  to  the  earl  of  Arundel's  house  at  Highgate,  where, 
after  seven  days'  illness,  he  died  early  in  the  moniing  of 
Easter  Sunday,  the  9th  of  April,  in  the  sixty-sixth  year  of 
his  age.  In  obedience  to  his  will  he  was  buried  in  the  same 
grave  with  his  mother,  in  St.  Michael's  Church,  near  St. 
Albans. 

It  is  sad  beyond  expression  to  turn  to  those  reflections 
which  are  suggested  by  the  life  of  this  great  man,  however 
leniently  one  may  be  disposed  to  regard  his  weaknesses.  Pie 
who  founded  the  philosophy  of  modern  Europe,  —  he  who 
brought  down  philosophy  from  heaven  to  earth,  disentan- 
gling it  from  airy  abstractions,  and  anchoring  it  on  practical 
truth,  —  he  who  aided  science  alike  by  his  improvements  on 


FRANCIS    BACON.  •   59 

its  procedure,  and  his  enlarged  views  of  its  end  and  aim, 
indicating  observation  of  individual  truths  as  the  only  sure 
guide  to  universal  conclusions,  and  practical  utility  as  the  only 
qfuality  which  makes  such  conclusions  worth  the  labor  they 
cost,  —  he  who  did  all  this,  was  destined  to  furnish,  by  his 
own  pitiable  example,  a  pregnant  illustration  of  the  great 
principles  which  his  writings  *  taught ;  a  slave  to  the  world 
and  its  vanities,  he  was  betrayed  by  the  evil  genius  whom  he 
served.  Unable  to  subject  reason,  and  passion,  and  imagina- 
tion, to  the  stern  control  of  the  moral  sense,  he  expiated,  by 
a  life  of  discomfort  and  dependence,  ending  in  an.  old  age  of 
sorrow  and  disgrace,  the  sin  of  having  misapprehended  the 
mighty  rule,  which  alone  can  save  the  empire  of  the  mind 
from  becoming  a  scene  like  ancient  chaos. 

Bacon's  philosophy  has  been  analyzed  in  other  parts  of 
this  work,^  and  on  his  literary  character  we  have  left  our- 
selves no  space  to  enlarge.  We  can  only  remark  the  power- 
ful effect  which  his  singular  versatility  of  talents  exercised 
over  the  dissemination  of  his  scientific  views.  •  "  The  reputa- 
tion which  Bacon  had  acquired  from  his  Essays,"  says  a 
late  writer,  "  a  work  early  translated  into  various  foreign^ 
languages,  —  his  splended  talents  as  an  orator,  — '  and  his 
prominent  place  in  public  life,  —  were  circumstances  strongly 
calculated  to  attract  the  curiosity  of  the  learned  world  to  his 
philosophical  writings."  And  these  writings  in  themselves 
partake  admirably  of  the  character  belonging  to  their 
author's  works  of  a  different  class.  Philosophy  has  seldom 
made  herself  more  attractive  ;  never  has  she  made  herself 
equally  so  in  communicating  lessons  of  sterling  value.  If 
the  works  of  this  wonderful  man  were  worthless  as  reposi- 
tories of  scientific  thought  and  knowledge,  they  would  still 
demand  reverential  study.  A  masterly  eloquence,  a  union 
of  diversified  qualities  of  style  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 

1  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 


60  NEW    BIOGKAPHIES. 

word,  distinguished  even  the  earlier  among  them,  and  entitled 
those  which  were  produced  in  the  writer's  mature  years,  to 
rank,  notwithstanding  the  faults  they  share  with  all  prose 
compositions  of  their  time,  as  monuments  nowhere  excelled 
in  the  compass  of  English  literature.^ 

1  Montagu's  Life  of  Bacon,  Worh,  Vol.  XVI.  parts  1  and  2, 1834. 
Edinburgh  Review,  Vol.  LXV.,  No.  132,  Art.  1.  Stewart  and  Play- 
fair,  in  the  Preliminary  Dissertations  to  the  Encyc.  Britan.  Napier 
on  the  Scope  and  Influence  of  the  Philosophical  Writings  of  Lord 
Bacon  ;  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  Vol 
VIIL  part  2,  1818. 


JOSEPH  BUTLER. 


Joseph  Butler,  Bishop  of  Durham  —  one  of  the  most 
profound  and  original  thinkers  this  or  any  other  country 
every  produced  —  well  deserves  a  place  among  the  dii 
majores  of  English  philosophy ;  with  Bacon,  Newton,  and 
Locke.  , 

The  following  brief  sketch  will  comprise  an  outline  of  his 
life  and  character,  some  remarks  on  the  peculiarity  of  his 
genius,  and  an  estimate  of  his  principal  writings. 

He  was  born  at  Wantage,  in  Berkshire,  May  18,  1692. 
His  father,  Thomas  Butler,  had  been  a  linen-draper  in  that 
town,  but  before  the  birth  of  Joseph,  who  was  the  youngest 
of  a  family  of  eight,  had  relinquished  business.  He  con- 
tinued to  reside  at  Wantage,  however,  at  a  house  called  the 
Priory,  which  is  still  shown  to  the  curious  visitor. 

Young  Butler  received  his  first  instructions  from  the  Rev. 
Philip  Barton,  a  clergyman,  and  master  of  the  grammar- 
school  at  Wantage.  The  father,  who  was  a  Presbyterian, 
was  anxious  that  his  son,  who  early  gave  indications  of  ca- 
pacity, should  dedicate  himself  to  the  ministry  in  his  own 
communion,  and  sent  him  to  a  Dissenting  academy  at  Glou- 
cester, then  kept  by  Mr.  Samuel  Jones.  "  Jones,"  says  Pro- 
fessor Fitzgerald  with  equal  truth  and  justice,  "  was  a  man 
of  no  mean  ability  or  erudition  ; "  and  adds,  with  honorable 

6  (61) 


62  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

liberality,  "  could  number  among  his  scholars  many  names 
that  might-confer  honor  on  any  university  in  Christendom."  ^ 
He  instances  among  others  Jeremiah  Jones,  the  author  of 
the  excellent  work  on  the  Canon  ;  Seeker,  afterwards  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury  ;  and  two  of  the  most  learned,  acute, 
and  candid  apologists  for  Christianity  England  has  produced 
—  Nathaniel  Lardner  and  Samuel  Chandler. 

The  academy  was  shortly  afterwards  removed  to  Tewkes- 
bury. While  yet  there,  Butler  first  displayed  his  extraordi- 
nary aptitude  for  metaphysical  speculation  in  the  letters  he 
sent  to  Clarke  on  two  supposed  flaws  in  the  reasoning  of  the 
recently  published  a  'priori  demonstrations ;  one  respecting 
the  proof  of  the  Divine  omnipresence,  and  the  other  respect- 
ing the  proof  of  the  unity  of  the  "necessarily  existent 
Being."  It  is  but  just  to  Clarke  to  say  that  his  opponent 
subsequently  surrendered  both  objections.  Whether  the 
capitulation  be  judged  strictly  the  result  of  logical  necessity, 
will  depend  on  the  estimate  foi-med  of  the  value  of  Clarke's 
proof  of  the  truths  in  question,  —  truths  which  are  happily 
capable  of  being  shown  to  be  so,  independently  of  any  such 
a  priori  metaphysical  demonstration.  In  this  encounter, 
Butler  showed  his  modesty  not  less  than  his  prowess.  He 
was  so  afraid  of  being  discovered,  that  he  employed  his 
friend  Seeker  to  convey  his  letters  to  the  Gloucester  post- 
office,  and  to  bring  back  the  answers. 

About  this  time  he  began  to  entertain  doubts  of  the  pro- 
priety of  adhering  to  his  father's  Presbyterian  opinions,  and 
consequently,  of  entering  the  ministry  of  that  communion ; 
doubts  which  at  length  terminated  in  his  joining  the  Church 
of  England.  His  father,  seeing  all  opposition  vain,  at  length 
consented  to  his  repairing  to  Oxford,  where  he  was  entered 

*  Life  of  Butler,  prefixed  to  Professor  Fitzgerald's  very  valuaMe 
edirion  of  the  Analogy,  Dublin,  1849.  The  memoir  is  derived  ciiiefly 
from  Mr.  Bartlett's  more  copious  "  Life ;  "  it  is  very  carefully  com- 
piled, and  is  frequently  cited  iu  the  present  article. 


JOSEPH    BUTLER.  63 

as  a  commoner  of  Oriel  College,  March  17,  1714.  Here  he 
early  formed  an  intimate  friendship  with  Mr.  Edward  Talbot, 
the  second  son-of  Bishop  of  Durham,  a  connection  to  which 
his  future  advancement  was  in  a  great  degree  owing. 

The  exact  period  at  which  Butler  took  orders  is  not 
known,  but  it  must  have  been  before  1717,  as  by  that  date 
he  was  occasionally  supplying  Talbot's  living,  at  Hendred, 
near  Wantage.  In  1718,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  he  was 
nominated  preacher  at  the  Rolls,  on  the  united  recommenda- 
tion of  Talbot  and  Dr.  Samuel  Clarke. 

At  this  time  the  country  was  in  a  ferment.  What  is 
called  the  "  Bangorian  Controversy,"  and  which  originated 
in  a  sermon  of  Bishop  Hoadley,  "  On  the  Nature  of  Christ's 
Kingdom,"  (a  discourse  supposed  to  imperil  "  all  ecclesiastical 
authority,")  was  then  raging.  One  pamphlet  which  that 
voluminous  contx'oversy  called  forth  has  been  attributed  to 
Butler.  "  The  external  evidence,  however  is,"  as  Mr.  Fitz- 
gerald judges,  "but  slight;  and  the  internal  for  the  negative 
at  least  equally  so."  This  writer  says,  "  On  the  whole,  I 
feel  unable  to  arrive  at  any  positive  decision  on  the  subject." 
Readers  curious  respecting  it  may  consult  Mr.  Fitzgerald's 
pages,  whei'e  they  will  find  a  detail  of  the  circumstances 
which  led  to  the  publication  of  the  pamphlet,  and  the  evi- 
dence for  and  against  its  being  attributed  to  Butler. 

In  1721,  Bishop  Talbot  presented  Butler  with  the  living 
of  Haughton,  near  Dorkington,  and  Seeker,  (who  had  also 
relinquished  nonconformity,  and  after  some  considerable 
fluctuations  in  his  rehgious  views,  had  at  length  entered  the 
church,)  with  that  of  Haughton-le-Spring.  In  1725,  the 
same  liberal  patron  transferred  Butler  to  the  more  lucrative 
benefice  of  Stanhope. 

He  retained  his  situation  of  preacher  at  the  Rolls  till  tlie 
following  year  (1726)  ;  and  before  quitting  it  published  the 
celebrated  Fifteen  Sermons  delivered  there ;  among  the 
most  profound  and  original  discourses  which  phUosophical 


C4  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

theologian  ever  gave  to  the  world.  As  these  could  have 
been  but  a  portion  of  those  he  preached  at  the  Rolls,  it  has 
often  been  asked  what  could  have  become  of  the  remainder  ? 
We  agree  with  Mr.  Fitzgerald  in  thinking  that  the  substance 
of  many  was  afterwards  worked  into  the  Analogy.  That 
.many  of  them  were  equally  important  with  the  Fifteen 
may  be  inferred  from  Butler's  declaration  in  the  preface,  — 
that  the  selection  of  these  had  been  determined  by  "  circum- 
stances in  a  great  measure  accidental."  At  his  death,  But- 
ler desired  his  manuscripts  to  be  destroyed ;  this  he  would 
hardly  have  done,  had  he  not  already  rifled  their  chief 
treasures  for  his  great  work.  Let  us  hope  so  at  all  events  ; 
for  it  would  be  provoking  to  think  that  discourses  of  equal 
value  with  the  Fifteen  had  been  wantonly  committed  to  the 
flames. 

After  resigning  his  preachership  at  the  Rolls,  he  retired  to 
Stanhope,  and  gave  himself  up  to  study  and  the  duties  of  a 
parish  priest.  All  that  could  be  gleaned  of  his  habits  and 
mode  of  life  there  has  been  preserved  by  the  present  Bishop 
of  Exeter,  his  successor  in  the  living  of  Stanhope  eighty 
years  after;  and  it  is  little  enough.  Tradition  said  that 
"  Rector  Butler  rode  a  black  pony,  and  always  rode  very 
fast ;  that  he  was  loved  and  respected  by  all  his  parishoners ; 
that  he  lived  very  retired,  was  very  kind,  and  could  not 
resist  the  importunities  of  common  beggars,  who,  knowing 
his  infirmity,  pursued  him  so  earnestly,  as  sometimes  to  drive 
him  back  into  his  house  as  his  only  escape."  The  last  fact 
the  bishop  reports  doubtful ;  but  Butler's  extreme  benevo- 
lence is  not  so. 

In  all  probability,  Butler  in  this  seclusion  was  meditating 
and  digesting  that  great  work  on  which  his  fame,  and  what 
is  better  than  fame,  his  usefulness,  principally  rests,  the 
Analogy.  "  In  a  similar  retirement,"  says  Professor  Fitz- 
gerald, "  The  Ecclesiastical  Polity  of  Hooker,  The  Intel- 
lectual System  of  Cudworth,  and  The  Divine  Legation  of 


JOSEPH    BUTLER.  65 

Warburton  —  records  of  genius  '  which  posterity  will  not 
willingly  let  die '  —  were  ripened  into  maturity."  Queen 
Caroline  once  asked  Archbishop  Blackburne  whether  Butler 
was  not  "  dead  ?  "  "  No,"  said  he,  "  but  he  is  buried."  It 
was  well  for  posterity  that  he  was  thus,  for  a  while,  en- 
tombed. 

He  remained  in  this  meditative  seclusion  seven  years.  At 
the  end  of  this  period,  his  friend  Seeker,  who  thought  But- 
ler's health  and  spirits  were  failing  under  excess  of  solitude 
and  study,  succeeded  in  dragging  him  from  his  retreat. 
Lord  Chancellor  Talbot,  at  Seeker's  solicitation,  appointed 
him  his  chaplain  in  1733 ;  and  in  1736  a  prebendary  of 
Rochester.  In  the  same  year.  Queen  Caroline,  who  thought 
her  court  derived  as  much  lustre  from  philosophers  and 
divines  as  from  statesmen  and  courtiers  —  who  had  been  the 
delighted  spectator  of  the  argumentative  contests  of  Clarke 
and  Berkeley,  Hoadley  and  Sherlock — appointed  Butler 
clerk  of  the  closet,  and  commanded  his  "attendance  every 
evening  from  seven  till  nine." 

It  was  in  1736  that  the  celebrated  Analogy  was  pub- 
lished, and  its  great  merits  immediately  attracted  public  at- 
tention. It  Avas  perpetually  in  the  hands  of  his  royal  pat- 
roness, and  passed  through  several  editions  before  the 
author's  death.  Its  greatest  praise  is  that  it  has  been  al- 
most universally  read,  and  never  answered.  "I  am  not 
aware,"  says  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  "that  any  of  those  whom  it 
would  have  immediately  concerned,  have  ever  attempted  a 
regular  reply  to  the  Analogy ;  but  particular  parts  of  it 
have  met  with  answers,  and  the  whole,  as  a  whole,  has  been 
sometimes  unfavorably  criticized."  Of  its  merits,  and  pre- 
cise position  in  relation  "  to  those  whom  it  immediately  con- 
cerns," we  shall  speak  presently. 

Some  strange  criticisms  on  its  general  character  in  Tho- 
luck's    Vermischte  Schriften,  shov>ring  a  singular  infelici'y  in 

6* 


66  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

missing  Butler's  true  ^^  stand-puiikt"  as  Tholuck's  own* 
countrymen  would  say,  and  rather  unreasonably  complaining 
of  obscurity,  considering  the  quality  of  German  theologico- 
2)hilosophical  style  in  general,  are  well  disposed  of  by 
Professor  Fitzgerald,  (pp.  47-50). 

About  this  time  Butler  had  some  correspondence  with 
Lord  Kaimes,  on  the  Evidences  of  Natural  and  Revealed 
Religion.  Kaimes  requested  a  personal  interview,  which 
Butler  declined  in  a  manner  very  characteristic  of  his  mod- 
esty and  caution.  It  was,  "on  the  score  of  his  natural 
diffidence  and  reserve,  his  being  unaccustomed  to  oral  con- 
troversy, and  his  fear  that  the  cause  of  truth  might  thence 
suffer  from  the  unskilfulness  of  its  advocate." 

Hume  was  a  kinsman  of  Lord  Kaimes,  and  when  pre- 
paring his  treatise  of  Human  Nature  for  the  press,  was  rec- 
ommended by  Lord  Kaimes  to  get  Butlers  judgment  on  it. 
"  Your  thoughts  and  mine,"  says  Hume,  "  agree  with  respect 
to  Dr.  Butler,  and  I  should  be  glad  to  be  introduced  to  him." 
The  interview,  however,  never  took  place,  nor  was  Butler's 
judgment  obtained.  One  cannot  help  speculating  on  th<? 
possible  consequences.     Would  it  have  made  any  difference  ? 

In  the  year  1737,  Queen  Caroline  died,  biit  on  her  death- 
bed recommended  her  favorite  divine  to  her  husband's  care. 
In  1738,  Butler  was  accordingly  made  Bishop  of  Bristol,  in 
place  of  Dr.  Gooch,  who  was  translated  to  Norwich.  This 
seems  to  have  been  a  politic  stroke  of  Walpole,  "  who  prob- 
ably thought "  says  Fitzgerald,  "  that  the  ascetic  rector  of 
Stanhope  was  too  unworldly  a  person  to  care  for  the  pov- 
erty of  his  preferment,  or  perceive  the  slight  which  it  im- 
plied." In  the  reply,  however,  in  which  Butler  expresses 
his  sense  of  the  honor  conferred,  he  shows  that  he  under- 
stood the  position  of  matters  very  clearly.  The  hint  he 
gave  seems  to  have  had  its  effect,  for  in  1740  the  King 
nominated  him  to  the  vacant  Deanery  of  St.  Pauls,  where- 


JOSEPH    BUTLER.  67 

apon  he  resigned  Stanhope,  which  he  had  hitherto  held  in 
commendam.  The  revenues  of  Bristol,  the  poorest  see,  did 
not  exceed  £400. 

A  curious  anecdote  of  Butler  has  been  preserved  by  his 
domestic  chaplain,  Dr.  Tucker,  afterwards  Dean  of  Glou- 
cester. He  says :  "  His  custom  was,  when  at  Bristol,  to 
walk  for  hours  in  his  garden  in  the  darkest  night  which  the 
time  of  year  could  afford,  and  I  had  frequently  the  honor  to 
attend  him.  After  walking  some  time,  he  would  stop  sud- 
denly and  ask  the  question, '  what  security  is  there  against 
the  insanity  of  individuals  ?  The  physicians  know  of  none, 
and  as  to  divines,  we  have  no  data,  either  from  Scripture  or 
from  reason,  to  go  upon  in  relation  to  this  affair.'  '  True, 
my  Lord,  no  man  has  a  lease  of  his  understanding  any  more 
than  of  his  life  ;  they  are  both  in  the  hands  of  the  Sovereign 
Disposer  of  all  things.'  He  would  then  take  another  turn, 
and  again  stop  short :  '  Why  might  not  whole  communities 
and  pubhc  bodies  be  seized  with  fits  of  insanity,  as  well  as 
individuals  ? '  '  My  Lord,  I  have  never  considered  the  case, 
and  can  give  no  opinion  concerning  it.'  '  Nothing  but  this 
principle,  that  they  are  liable  to  insanity,  equally  at  least 
with  private  persons,  can  account  for  the  major  part  of  those 
transactions  of  which  we  read  in  history,'  I  thought  little  of 
that  odd  conceit  of  the  bishop  at  that  juncture  ;  but  I  own  I 
could  not  avoid  thinking  of  it  a  great  deal  since,  and  ap- 
plying it  to  many  cases." 

In  1747,  on  the  death  of  Archbishop  Potter,  it  is  said  that 
the  primacy  was  offered  to  Butler,  who  declined  it,  with  the 
remark  that  "it  was  too  late  for  him  to  try  to  support  a 
falling  church."  K  he  really  said  so,  it  must  have  been  in 
a  moment  of  despondency,  to  which  his  constitutional  melan- 
choly often  disposed  him.  No  such  feeling,  at  all  events, 
prevented  his  accepting  the  bishopric  of  Durham  in  1750, 
on  the  death  of  Dr.  Edward  Chandler.  About  the  time  of 
his  promotion  to  this  dignity,  he  was  engaged  in  a  design  for 


08  ,      NEW   BIOGRAPHIKS. 

consolidating  and  extending  the  Church  of  England  in  the 
American  colonies.  With  this  object  he  drew  up  a  plan 
marked  by  his  characteristic  moderation  and  liberality ;  the 
project,  however,  came  to  nothing. 

Soon  after  his  translation  to  the  see  of  Durham,  Butler 
delivered  and  published  his  charge  on  the  Use  and  Impor- 
tance of  External  Religion,  which  gave  rise,  in  conjunction 
with  his  erection  of  a  "  white  marble  cross  "  over  the  com- 
munion table  in  his  chapel  at  Bristol,  and  one  or  two 
other  slight  circumstances,  to  the  ridiculous  and  malignant 
charge  of  popery  ;  —  a  charge,  as  Mr.  Fitzg,erald  observes, 
"  destitute  of  a  shadow  of  positive  evidence,  and  contra- 
dicted by  the  whole  tenor  of  Butler's  character,  life,  and 
writings." 

The  revenues  from  his  see  were  lavisftly  expended  in  the 
support  of  public  and  private  charities,^  while  his  own  mode 
of  life  was  most  simple  and  unostentatious.  Of  the  frugality 
of  his  table,  the  following  anecdote  is  proof:  —  "  A  friend  of 
mine,  since  deceased,  told  me,"  says  the  Rev.  John  Newton, 
"  that  when  he  was  a  young  man,  he  once  dined  with  the  late 
Dr.  Butler,  at  that  time  Bishop  of  Durham  ;  and,  though 
the  guest  was  a  man  of  fortune,  and  the  interview  by  ap- 
pointment, the  provision  was  no  more  than  a  joint  of  meat 
and  a  pudding.  The  bishop  apologized  for  his  plain  fare, 
by  saying,  that  it  was  his  way  of  living ;  '  that  he  had  long 
been  disgusted  with  the  fashionable  expense  of  time  and 

1  Butler  must  have  been  of  a  naturally  munificent  as  well  as  benev- 
olent disposition.  He  was  extremely  fond,  it  appears,  of  planning 
and  building ;  a  passion  not  always  very  prudently  indulged,  or  with- 
out danger,  in  early  days,  of  involving  him  in  difficulties ;  from 
which,  indeed,  on  one  occasion  Seeker's  intervention  saved  hjm.  He 
spent  large  sums  in  improving  his  various  residences.  It  was  prob- 
ably in  the  indulgence  of  the  love  of  ornamentation  to  which  this 
passion  led,  tliat  the  "marble  cross  "and  other  imprudent  symbols 
which  were  so  ridiculously  adduced  to  support  the  charge  of  popery 
originated. 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  69 

money  in  entertainments,  and  was  determined  that  it  should 
receive  no  countenance  from  his  example.'"  No  prelate 
ever  owed  less  to  politics  for  his  elevation,  or  took  less  part 
in  them.  If  he  was  not  "  wafted  to  his  see  of  Durham,"  as 
Horace  Walpole  ludicrously  said,  "on  a  cloud  of  meta- 
physics," he  certainly  was  not  carried  there  by  political  in- 
trigue or  party  manceuvres.  He  was  never  known  to 
speak  in  the  House  of  Peers,  though  constant  in  his  at- 
tendance there. 

He  had  not  long  enjoyed  his  new  dignity  before  symp- 
toms of  decay  disclosed  themselves.  He  repaired  to  Bath 
in  1752,  in  hope  of  recovering  his  health,  where  he  died, 
June  16,  in  the  sixtieth  year  of  his  age. 

His  face  was  thin,  and  pale,  but  singularly  expressive  of 
placidity  and  benevolence.  "  His  white  hair,"  says  Hutch- 
inson,^ "hung  gracefully  on  his  shoulders,  and  his  whole 
figure  was  patriarchal."  He  was  buried  in  the  cathedral  of 
Bristol,  where  two  monuments  have  been  erected  to  his 
memory.  They  record  in  suitable  inscriptions  (one  in  Latin 
by  his  chaplain.  Dr.  Foster,  and  the  other  in  English  by  the 
late  Dr.  Southey)  his  virtues  and  genius.  Thougli  epi- 
taphs, they  speak  no  more  than  simple  truth. 

A  singular  anecdote  is  recorded  of  his  last  moments.  As 
.  Mr.  Fitzgerald  observes,  "  it  wants  direct  testimony,"  but  is 
in  itself  neither  uniustructive  nor  incredible,  for  a  dying 
hour  has  often  given  strange  vividness  and  intensity  to  truths 
neither  previously  unknown  nor  uninfiuential.  It  is  gen- 
erally given  thus:  —  "When  Bishop  Butler  lay  on  his 
death-bed,  he  called  for  his  chaplain,  and  said,  '  though  I 
have  endeavored  to  avoid  sin,  and  to  please  God,  to  the 
utmost  of  my  power ;  yet,  from  the  consciousness  of  per- 
petual infirmities,  I  am  still  afraid  to  die.'  '  My  Lord,'  said 
the   chaplain,  'you  have  forgottpn    that  Jesus   Christ  is  a 

1  History  of  Durham,  vol.  I.  p.  578  ;  cited  in  Filzgorald's  "Life." 


70  ,  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

Saviour.'  '  True,'  was  the  answer,  '  but  how  shall  I  know 
that  he  is  a  Saviour  for  me  ? '  '  Mj  Lord,  it  is  written,  him 
that  Cometh  unto  me,  I  will  in  nowise  cast  out.'  'True,' 
said  the  bishop,  *  and  I  am  surprised,  that  though  I  have 
read  that  Scripture  a  thousand  times  over,  I  never  felt  its 
virtue  till  this  moment ;    and  now  I  die  happy.'  " 

The  genius  of  Butler  was  almost  equally  distinguished  by 
subtilty  and  comprehensiveness,  though  the  latter  quality 
was  perhaps  the  most  characteristic.  In  his  Juvenile  cor- 
respondence with  Clarke  —  already  referred  to  —  he  dis- 
plays an  acuteness  which,  as  Sir  James  Mackintosh  ob- 
serves, "neither  himself  nor  any  other  ever  surpassed;"  an 
analytic  skill,  which,  in  earlier  ages,  might  easily  have 
gained  him  a  rank  with  the  most  renowned  of  the  schoolmen. 
But  in  his  mature  works,  though  they  are  everywhere  char- 
acterized by  subtle  thought,  he  manifests  in  combination  with 
it  qualities  yet  more  valuable ;  —  patient  comprehensiveness 
in  the  survey  of  complex  evidence,  a  profound  judgment 
and  a  most  judicial  calmness  in  computing  its  several  ele- 
ments, and  a  singular  constructive  skill  in  combining  the 
materials  of  argument  into  a  consistent  logical  fabric.  This 
"architectural  power"  of  mind  may  be  wholly  or  nearly 
wanting,  where  the  mere  analytic  faculty  may  exist  in 
much  vigor.  The  latter  may  even  be  possessed  in  vicious 
excess,  resulting  in  Uttle  more  than  the  disintegration  of  the 
subjects  presented  to  its  ingenuity.  Synthetically  to  recoh- 
■  struct  the  complex  unity,  when  the  task  of  analysis  is  com- 
pleted, to  assign  the  reciprocal  relations  and  law  of  subor- 
dination of  its  various  parts,  requires  something  more. 
Many  can  take  a  watch  to  pieces,  who  would  be  sorely 
puzzled  to  put  it  together  again. 

Butler  possessed  these  powers  of  analysis  and  synthesis 
in  remarkable  equipoise.  What  is  more,  he  could  not  only 
recombine,  and  present  in  symmetrical  harmony,  the  ele- 
ments of  a  complex  unity  when  capable  of  being  subjected 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  71 

to  an  exact  previous  analysis,  —  as  in  his  remarkable  sketch 
of  the  Moral  Constitution  of  Man,  —  but  he  had  a  wonder- 
fully keen  eye  for  detecting  remote  analogies  and  subtle 
relations  where  the  elements  are  presented  intermingled  or 
in  isolation,  and  insusceptible  of  being  presented  as  a  single 
object  of  contemplation  previous  to  the  attempt  to  combine 
them.  This  is  the  case  with  the  celebrated  Analogy.  In, 
the  Sermons  on  Human  Nature,  he  comprehensively  sur- 
veys that  nature  as  a  system  or  constitution;  and  after  a 
careful  analysis  of  its  principles,  aflfections,  and  passions, 
views  these  elements  in  combination,  endeavors  to  reduce 
each  of  these  to  its  place,  assigns  to  them  their  relative 
importance,  and  deduces  from  the  whole  the  law  of  subordi- 
nation, —  which  he  finds  in  the  Moral  Supremacy  of  Con- 
science, as  a  keystone  to  the  arch  —  the  ruling  principle  of 
the  "  Constitution."  In  the  Analogy,  he  gathers  up  and 
combines  from  a  wide  survey  of  scattered  and  disjointed 
facts,  those  resemblances  and  relations  on  which  the  argu- 
ment is  founded,  and  works  them  into  one  of  the  most 
original  and  symmetrical  logical  creations  to  which  human 
genius  ever  gave  birth.  The  latter  task  was  by  far  the 
more  gigantic  of  the  two.  To  recur  to  our  previous  illus- 
tration, Butler* is  here  like  one  who  puts  a  watch  together 
without  having  been  permitted  to  take  it  to  pieces  —  from 
the  mere  presentation  of  its  disjointed  fragments.  In  the 
former  case  he  resembled  the  physiologist  who  has  an  entire 
animal  to  study  and  dissect ;  in  the  latter  he  resembled 
Cuvier,  constructing  out  of  disjecta  membra  —  a  bone  scat- 
tered here  and  there  —  an  organized  unity  which  man  had 
never  seen  except  in  isolated  fragments. 

All  Butler's  productions  —  even  his  briefest  —  display 
much  of  this  "  architectonic  "  quality  of  mind  ;  in  all  he  not 
only  evinces  a  keen  analytic  power  in  discerning  the  "  differ- 
ences," (one  phase  of  the  philosophic  genius,  according  to 
Bacon,  and  hardly  the  brightest,)  but  a  still  higher  power 


72  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

of  detecting  the  "  analogies  "  and  "  resemblances  of  things," 
and  thus  of  showing  their  relation  and  subordination. 
These  peculiarities  make  his  writings  ■difficult ;  but  it  makes 
them  profound,  and  it  gives  them  singular  completeness. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  assign  the  precise  sphere  in  which 
Butler,  with  eminent  gifts  for  abstract  science  in  general, 
felt  most  at  home.  Facts  show  us,  not  only  that  there  are 
peculiarities  of  mental  structure  which  prompt  men  to  the 
pursuit  of  some  of  the  great  objects  of  thought  and  specula- 
tion rather  than  others  —  peculiarities  which  circumstances 
may  determine  and  education  modify,  but  which  neither 
circumstances  nor  education  can  do  more  than  determine  or 
modify ;  but  that  even  in  relation  to  the  very  same  subject 
of  speculation,  there  are  minute  and  specific  varieties  of 
mind,  which  prompt  men  to  addict  thismselves  rather  to 
this  part  of  it  than  to  that.  This  was  the  case  with  Butler. 
Eminently  fitted  for  the  prosecution  of  metaphysical  science 
in  general,  it  is  always  the  philosophy  of  the  moral  nature 
of  man  to  which  he  most  naturally  attaches  himself,  and  on 
which  he  best  loves  to  expatiate.  Neither  Bacon  nor  Pas- 
cal ever  revolved  more  deeply  the  phenomena  of  our  moral 
nature,  or  contemplated  its  inconsistencies  —  its  intricacies 
—  its  paradoxes  —  with  a  keener  glance  oi*  more  compre- 
hensive survey ;  or  drew  from  such  survey  reflections  more 
original  or  instructive.  As  in  reading  Locke  the  young 
metaphysician  is  perpetually  startled  by  the  palpable  appa- 
rition, in  distinct  sharply-defined  outline,  of  facts  of  con- 
sciousness which  he  recognizes  as  having  been  partially  and 
dimly  present  to  his  mind  before  —  though  too  fugitive  to 
fix,  too  vague  to  receive  a  name ;  so  in  reading  Butler,  he 
is  continually  surprised  by  the  statement  of  moral  facts  and 
laws,  which  he  then  first  adequately  recognizes  as  true,  and 
sees  in  distinct  vision  face  to  face.  It  is  not  without  reason 
that  Sir  James  Mackintosh  says  of  the  sermons  preached  at 
the   Rolls,  "that   in   them   Butler  has  taught  truths  more 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  73 

capable  of  being  exactly  distinguished  from  the  doctrines 
of  his  predecessors,  more  satisfactorily  established  by  him, 
more  comprehensively  applied  to  particulars,  more  rationally 
connected  with  each  other,  and  therefore  more  worthy  of  the 
name  of  discovery,  than  any  with  which  we  are  acquainted." 

His  special  predilections  for  the  sphere  of  speculation  we 
have  mentioned  are  strikingly  indicated  in  his  choice  of  the 
ground  from  which  he  proposes  to  survey  the  questions  of 
morals.  "  There  are  two  ways,"  says  he  in  the  preface  to 
his  three  celebrated  sermons  on  Human  Nature,  "  in  which 
the  subject  of  morals  may  be  treated.  One  begins  in- 
quiring into  the  «bstract  relations  of  things ;  the  other, 
from  a  matter  of  fact,  namely,  what  the  particular  nature 
of  man  is,  its  several  parts,  their  economy  or  constitu- 
tion; from  whence  it  proceeds  to  determine  what  course 
of  life  it  is,  which  is  correspondent  to  this  whole  nature." 
As  might  be  expected,  from  the  tendencies  of  his  mind,  he 
selects  the  latter  course. 

The  powers  of  observation  in  Butler  must  have  been,  in 
spite  of  his  studious  life  and  his  remarkable  habits  of  ab- 
straction, not  much  inferior  to  his  keen  faculty  of  introspec- 
tion, though  this  last  was  undoubtedly  the  main  instrument 
by  which  he  traced  so  profoundly  the  mysteries  of  our 
nature.  There  have  doubtless  been  other  men,  fai*  less 
profound,  who  have  had  a  more  quick  and  more  vivid  per- 
ception of  the  peculiarities  of  character  which  discriminate 
individuals,  or  small  classes  of  men  (evincing,  after  all,  how- 
ever, not  so  much  a  knowledge  of  man  as  a  knowledge  of 
men) ;  still,  the  masterly  manner  in  which  Butler  often 
sketches  even  these,  shows  that  he  must  have  been  a  very 
sagacious  observer  of  those  phenomena  of  human  nature 
which  presented  themselves  from  without,  as  well  as  of 
those  which  revealed  themselves  from  within.  In  general, 
however,  it  is  the  characteristics  of  man,  the  generic  phe- 
nomena of  our  nature,  in  all  their  complexity  and  subtilty, 

7 


74  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

that  he  best  loves  to  investigate  and  exhibit.  The  spirit  of 
his  profound  philosophy  is  meantime  worthy  both  of  the 
Christian  character  and  the  ample  intellect  of  him  who  ex- 
cogitated it.  It  is  the  very  reverse  of  that  of  the  philo- 
sophical satirist  or  caricaturist;  however  severely  just  the 
foibles,  the  inconsistencies,  the  corruptions  of  our  nature,  it 
is  a  philosophy  everywhere  compassionate,  magnanimous, 
and  philant'hropic.  Its  tone,  indeed,  like  that  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  Pascal  (though  not  shaded  with  the  same  deep 
melancholy),  is  entirely  modulated  by  a  profound  conviction 
of  the  frailty  and  ignorance  of  man,  of  the  little  we  know 
compared  with  what  is  to  be  known,  Snd  of  the  duty  of 
humility,  modesty,  and  caution  in  relation  to  all  those  great 
problems  of  the  universe,  which  tempt  and  exercise  man's 
ambitious  speculations.  His  constant  feeling,  amidst  the 
beautiful  and  original  reasonings  of  the  Analogy,  is  iden- 
tical with  that  of  Newton,  when,  reverting  at  the  close  of 
life  to  his  sublime  discoveries,  he  declared  that  he  seemed 
only  like  a  child  who  had  been  amusing  himself  with  pick- 
ing up  a  few  shells  on  the  margin  of  the  ocean  of  universal 
truth,  while  the  infinite  still  lay  unexplored  before  him. 
In  a  word,  it  is  the  feehng,  not  only  of  Pascal  and  of  New- 
ton, but  of  all  the  profoundest  speculators  of  our  race,  whose 
grandest  lesson  from  all  they  learned,  was  the  vanishing 
ratio  of  man's  knowledge  to  man's  ignorance.  Hence  the 
immense  value  (if  only  as  a  discipline)  of  a  careful  study 
of  Butler's  writings,  to  every  youthful  mind.  They  cannot 
but  powerfully  tend  to  check  presumption,  and  teach  mod- 
esty and  self-distrust. 

The  feebleness  of  Butler's  imagination  was  singularly 
contrasted  with  the  inventive  and  constructive  qualities  of 
his  intellect,  and  the  facility  with  which  he  detected  and 
employed  "analogies"  in  the  way  of  argument.  He  is, 
indeed,  almost  unique  in  this  respect.  Other  philosophic 
minds  (Bacon  and  Burke  are  illustrious  examples),  which 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  75 

have  possessed  similar  aptitudes  for  "  analogical "  reasoning, 
have  usually  had  quite  sufficient  of  the  kindred  activity  of 
imagination  to  employ  "  analogies  "  for  the  purpose  of  poeti- 
cal illustration.  If  Butler  possessed  this  faculty  by  nature 
in  any  tolerable  measure,  it  must  (as  has  been  the  case  with 
some  other  great  thinkers)  have  been  repressed  and  ab- 
sorbed by  his  habits  of  abstraction.  His  defect  in  this 
respect  is,  in  some  respects,  to  be  regretted,  since  unques- 
tionably the  illustrations  which  imagination  would  have  sup- 
plied to  argument,  and  the  graces  it  would  have  imparted  to 
style,  would  have  made  his  writings  both  more  intelligible 
and  more  attractive.  It  is  said  that  once,  and  once  only, 
he  "  courted  the  muses,"  having  indited  a  solitary  "  acrostic 
to  a  fair  cousin  "  who  for  the  first,  and  as  it  seems,  the  only 
time,  inspired  him  with  the  tender  passion.  But,  as  one  of 
his  biographers  says,  we  have  probably  no  great  reason  to 
lament  the  loss  of  this  fragment  of  his  poetry. 

Butler's  composition  is  almost  as  destitute  of  the  vivacity 
of  wit  as  of  the  graces  of  imagination.  Yet  is  he  by  no 
means  without  that  dry  sort  of  humor,  which  often  accom- 
panies very  vigorous  logic,  and,  indeed,  is  in  some  sense 
inseparable  from  it ;  for  the  neat  detection  of  a  sophism,  or 
the  sudden  and  unexpected  explosion  of  a  fallacy,  produces 
much  the  same  effect  as  wit  on  those  who  are  capable  of 
enjoying  close  and  cogent  reasoning.  There  is  also  a  kind 
of  simple,  grave,  satirical  pleasantry,  with  which  he  some- 
times states  and  refutes  an  objection,  by  no  means  without 
its  piquancy. 

As  to  the  complaint  of  obscurity,  which  has  been  so  often 
charged  on  Butler's  style,  it  is  difficult  to  see  its  justice  in 
the  sense  in  which  it  has  been  usually  preferred.  He  is  a 
difficult  author,  no  doubt,  but  he  is  so  from  the  close  pack- 
ing of  his  thoughts,  and  their  immense  generality  and  com- 
prehensiveness ;  as  also  from  what  may  be  called  the  breadth 
of  his  march,  and  from  occasional  lateral  excursions  for  the 


76  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

purpose  of  disposing  of  £ome  objection  which  he  does  not 
formally  mention,  but  which  might  harass  his  flank ;  it 
certainly  is  not  from  indeterminate  language  or  (ordinarily) 
involved  construction.  All  that  is  i-eally  required  in  the 
reader,  capable  of  understanding  him  at  all,  is  to  do  just 
what  he  does  with  lyrical  poetry  (if  we  may  employ  an  odd, 
and  yet  in  this  one  point,  not  inapt  comparison)  ;  he  must 
read  sufficiently  often  to  make  all  the  transitions  of  thought 
familiar,  he  must  let  the  mind  dwell  with  patience  on  each 
argument  till  its  entire  scope  and  bearing  are  properly  ap- 
preciated. Nothing  certainly  is  wanting  in  the  method  or 
arrangement  of  the  thoughts ;  and  the  diction  seems  to  us 
selected  with  the  utmost  care  and  precision.  Indeed,  as 
Professor  Fitzgerald  justly  observes,  a  collation  of  the  first 
with  the  subsequent  editions  of  the  Analogy  (the  vari- 
ations are  given  in  Mr.  Fitzgerald's  edition)  will  show,  by 
the  nature  of  the  alterations,  what  pains  Butler  bestowed 
on  a  point  on  which  he  is  erroneously  supposed  to  have 
been  negligent.  In  subjects  so  abstruse,  and  involving  so 
much  generality  of  expression,  the  utmost  difficulty  must 
always  be  experienced  in  selecting  language  which  conveys 
neither  tnore  nor  less  than  what  is  intended ;  and  this  point 
Butler  must  have  labored  immensely ;  it  may  be  added,  suc- 
cessfully, since  he  has  at  least  produced  works  which  have 
seldom  given  rise  to  disputes  as  to  his  meaning.  Though 
he  may  be  difficult  to  be  understood,  few  people  complain 
of  his  being  liable  to  be  wwunderstood.  In  short,  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  any  man  of  so  comprehensive  a  mind, 
and  dealing  with  such  abstract  subjects,  ever  condensed  the 
results  of  twenty  years  meditations  into  so  small  a  compass, 
with  so  little  obscurity.  No  doubt  greater  amplification 
would  have  made  him  more  pleasing,  but  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  the  perusal  of  his  writings  would  have  been 
so  useful  a  discipline  ;  and  whether  the  truths  he  has  deliv- 
ered would  have  fixed  themselves  so  indelibly  as  they  now 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  77 

generally  do  in  the  minds  of  all  who  diligently  study  him. 
Tt  is  the  result  of  the  very  activity  of  mind  his  writings 
stimulate  and  demand.  But,  at  any  rate,  if  precision  in  the 
use  of  language,  and  method  and  consecutiveness  in  the 
thoughts,  are  sufficient  to  rebut  the  charge  of  obscurity, 
Butler  is  not  chargeable  with  the  fault  in  the  ordinary 
sense.  We  must  never  forget  what  Whately  in  his  Rhetoric 
has  so  well  illustrated  —  that  perspicuity  is  a  "  relative  qual- 
ity." To  the  intelligent,  or  those  who  are  willing  to  take 
sufficient  pains  to  understand,  Butler  will  not  seem  charge- 
able with  obscurity.  The  diction  is  plain,  downright  Saxon- 
English,  and  the  style,  however  homely,  has,  as  the  writer 
just  mentioned  observes,  the  great  charm  of  transparent 
simplicity  of  purpose  and  unaffected  earnestness. 

The  immortal  Analogy  has  probably  done  more  to 
silence  the  objections  of  infidelity  than  any  other  ever 
written  from  the  earliest  "apologies"  downwards.  It  not 
only  most  critically  met  the  spirit  of  unbelief  in  the  author's 
own  day,  but  is  equally  adapted  to  meet  that  which  chiefiy 
pranrails  in  all  time.  In  every  age  some  of  the  principal, 
perhaps  the  principal,  objections  to  the  Christian  Revelation, 
have  been  those  which  men's  preconceptions  of  the  Divine 
character  and  administi'ation  —  of  what  God  must  be,  and 
of  what  God  must  do  —  have  suggested  against  certain  facts 
in  the  sacred  history,  or  certain  doctrines  it  reveals.  To 
show  the  objector  then  (supposing  him  to  be  a  theist,  as 
nine  tenths  of  all  such  objectors  have  been),  that  the  very 
same  or  similar  difficulties  are  found  in  the  structure  of  the 
universe  and  the  divine  administration  of  it,  is  to  wrest 
every  such  weapon  completely  from  his  hands,  if  he  be  a 
fair  reasoner  and  remains  a  theist  at  all.  He  is  bound  by 
strict  logical  obligation  either  to  show  that  the  parallel  diffi- 
culties do  not  exist,  or  to  show  how  he  can  solve  them, 
while  he  cannot  solve  those  of  the  Bible.  In  default  of 
7* 


78  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

doing  either  of  these  things,  he  ought  either  to  renounce  all 
'  such  objections  to  Christianity,  or  abandon  theism  altogether. 
It  is  true,  therefore,  that  though  Butler  leaves  the  alterna- 
tive of  atheism  open,  he  hardly  leaves  any  other  alternative 
to  nine  tenths  of  the  theists  who  have  objected  to  Christian- 
ity. 

It  has  been  sometimes  said  by  way  of  reproach,  that 
Butler  does  leave  that  door  open ;  that  his  work  does  not 
confute  the  atheist.  The  answer  is,  that  it  is  not  its  object 
to  confute  atheism ;  but  it  is  equally  true,  that  it  does  not 
diminish  by  one  grain  any  of  the  arguments  against  it. 
It  leaves  the  evidence  for  theism  —  every  particle  of  it  — 
just  where  it  was.  Butler  merely  avails  himself  of  facts 
which  exist,  undeniably  exist  (whether  men  be  atheists  or 
theists),  to  neutralize  a  certain  class  of  objections  against 
Christianity.  And  as  the  exhibition  of  such  facts  as  form 
the  pivot  on  which  Butler's  argument  turns,  does  not  im- 
pugn the  truth  of  theism,  but  leaves  its  conclusions,  and  the 
immense  preponderance  and  convergence  of  evidence  which 
establish  them  just  as  they  were,  so  it  is  equally  true  that 
Butler  has  sufficiently  guarded  his  argument  from  any  per- 
version ;  for  example,  in  Part  I.  chap.  VI.  and  Part  II. 
chap.  VIII.  He  has  also  with  his  accustomed  acuteness  and 
judgment  shown  that,  even  on  the  principles  of  atheism 
itself,  its  confident  assumption  that,  if  its  principles  be 
granted,  a  future  life  —  future  happiness  —  future  misery  — 
is  a  dream  —  cannot  be  depended  on  ;  for  since  men  have 
existed,  they  may  again ;  and  if  in  a  bad  condition  now 
in  a  worse  hereafter.  It  is  not,  on  such  an  hypothesis,  a 
whit  more  unaccountable  that  man's  life  should  be  renewed 
or  preserved,  or  perpetuated  forever,  than  that  it  should  have 
been  originated  at  all.  On  this  point,  he  truly  says,  "  That 
we  are  to  live  hereafter  is  just  as  reconcilable  with  the 
scheme  of  atheism,  and  as  well  to  be  accounted  for  by  it,  as 


JOSEPH   BUTLEK.  7i) 

that  we  are  now  alive,  is ;  and  therefore  nothing  can  be 
more  absurd  than  to  argue  from  that  scheme,  that  there  can 
be  no  future  state." 

It  has  been  also  alleged  that  the  analogy  only  "  shifts  the 
difficulty  from  revealed  to  natural  religion,"  and  that  "  athe- 
ists might  make  use  of  the  arguments  and  have  done  so." 
The  answer  is,  not  only  (as  just  said)  that  the  arguments  of 
Butler  leave  every  particle  of  the  evidence  for  theism  just 
Avhere  it  was,  and  that  he  has  sufficiently  guarded  against  all 
abuse  of  them  ;  but  that  the  facts,  of  which  it  is  so  foohshly 
said  that  the  atheist  might  make  iU  use,  had  always  been  the 
very  arguments  which  he  had  used,  and  of  which  Butler  only 
made  a  new  and  beneficial  application.  The  objections  with 
which  he  perplexes  and  baffles  the  deist,  he  did  not  give  to  the 
atheist's  armory ;  he  took  them  from  thence,  merely  to  make 
an  unexpected  and  more  legitimate  use  of  them.  The  athe- 
ist had  never  neglected  such  weapons,  nor  was  likely  to  do 
60,  previous  to  Butler's  adroit  application  of  them.  The 
charge  is  ridiculous ;  as  well  might  a  man,  who  had  wrested 
a  stiletto  from  an  assassin  to  defend  himself,  be  accused  of 
having  put  the  weapon  into  the  assassin's  hands  !  It  was 
there  before ;  he  merely  wrested  it  thence.  It  is  just  so 
with  Butler. 

•  Further ;  we  cannot  but  think  that  the  conclusiveness  of 
Butler's  work  as  against  its  true  object  The  Deist,  has 
often  been  underrated,  by  many  even  of  its  genuine  admir- 
ers. Thus  Dr.  Chalmers,  for  instance,  who  gives  such  glow- 
ing proofs  of  his  admiration  of  the  work,  and  expatiates  in 
a  congenial  spirit  on  its  merits,  affirms  that  "  those  overrate 
the  power  of  analogy  who  look  to  it  for  any  very  distinct  or 
positive  contribution  to  the  Christian  argument.  To  repel 
objections,  in  fact,  is  the  great  service  which  analogy  has 
rendered  to  the  cause  of  Revelation,  and  it  is  the  only  service 
which  we.  seek  for  at  its  hands."  *  This,  abstractedly,  is  true ; 
1  Prelections  on  Butler,  etc.  p.  7.  * 


80  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

but,  in  fact,  considering  the  position  of  the  bulk  of  the  ob- 
jectors, that  they  have  been  invincibly  persuaded  of  the 
truth  of  theism,  and  that  their  objections  to  Christianity  have 
been  exclusively  or  chiefly  of  the  kind  dealt  with  in  the 
Analogy,  the  work  is  much  more  than  an  argumentum  ad 
hominem  ;  it  is  not  simply  of  negative  value.  To  such  ob- 
jectors it  logically  establishes  the  truth  of  Christianity,  or  it 
forces  them  to  recede  from  theism,  which  the  bulk  will  not 
do.  If  a  man  says,  "  I  am  invincibly  persuaded  of  the  truth 
of  proposition  A,  but  I  cannot  receive  proposition  B,  be- 
cause objections  a,  ^,  y  are  opposed  to  it ;  if  these  were 
removed,  my  objections  would  cease;"  then,  if  you  can  show 
that  a,  ^,  y  equally  apply  to  the  proposition  A,  his  recep- 
tion of  which,  he  says,  is  based  on  invincible  evidence,  you 
do  really  compel  such  a  man  to  believe  that  not  only  B  may 
be  true,  but  that  it  is  true,  unless  he  be  willing  (which  few 
in  the  parallel  case  are)  to  abandon  proposition  A  as  well  as 
B.  This  is  precisely  the  condition  in  which  the  majority  of 
deists  have  ever  been,  if  we  may  judge  from  their  writings. 
It  is  usually  the  a  priori  assumption,  that  certain  facts  fe 
the  history  of  the  Bible,  or  some  portions  of  its  doctrine,  are 
unworthy  of  the  Deity,  and  incompatible  with  his  character 
or  administration,  that  has  chiefly  excited  the  incredulity  of 
the  deist ;  far  more  than  any  dissatisfaction  with  the  posi- 
tive evidence  which  substantiates  the  Divine  origin  of  Cliris- 
tianity.  Neutralize  these  objections  by  showing  that  they 
are  equally  applicable  to  what  he  declares  he  cannot  relin- 
quish —  the  doctrines  of  theism  ;  and  you  show  him,  if  he 
has  a  particle  of  logical  sagacity,  not  only  that  Christianity 
may  be  true,  but  that  it  is  so ;  and  his  only  escape  is  by 
relapsing  into  atheism,  or  jesting  his  opposition  on  other  ob- 
jections of  a  very  feeble  character  in  comparison,  and  which, 
probably,  few  would  have  ever  been  contented  with  alone  ; 
for  apart  from  those  objections  which  Butler  repels,  the 
•historical  evidence  for  Christianity  —  the  evidence  on  be- 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  81 

half  of  the  integrity  of  its  records,  and  the  honesty  and  sin- 
cerity of  its  founders,  showing  that  they  could  not  have 
constructed  such  a  system  if  they  would,  and  would  not, 
supposing  them  impostors,  if  they  could  —  is  stronger  than 
that  for  any  fact  in  history. 

In  consequence  of  this  position  of  the  argument,  Butler's 
book,  to  large  classes  of  objectors,  though  practically  an 
argumentum  ad  hominem,  not  only  proves  Chi-istianity  may 
be  true,  but  in  all  logical  fairness  proves  it  is  so.  This  he 
himself,  with  his  usual  judgment,  points  out.  He  says : 
"  And  objections,  which  are  equally  applicable  to  both  nat- 
ural and  revealed  religion,  are,  properly  speaking,  answered 
by  its  being  shown  that  they  are  so,  provided  the  former  be 
admitted  to  be  true." 

The  praise  which  Mackintosh  bestowed  on  this  great 
work,  is  alike  worthy  of  it  and  himself.  "  Butler's  great 
work,  though  only  a  commentary  on  the  singulai'ly  original 
and  pregnant  passage  of  Origen,  which  is  so  honestly  pre- 
fixed to  it  as  a  motto,  is,  notwithstanding,  the  most  oi'iginal 
and  profound  work  extant  in  any  language,  on  the  Philoso- 
phy of  Religion."  ^  The  favorite  topics  of  the  Sermons 
are,  of  course,  largely  insisted  on  in  the  Analogy ;  such 
as  the  "  ignorance  of  man  ;  "  the  restrictions  which  the  lim- 
itations of  his  nature  and  his  position  in  the  universe  should 
impose  on  his  speculations  ;  his  subjection  to  "  probability  as 
the  guide  of  life  ; "  the  folly  and  presumption  of  pronounc- 
ing, a  priori,  on  the  character  and  conduct  of  the  Divine 
Ruler  from  our  contracted  point  of  view,  and  our  glimpses 
of  but  a  very  %mall  segment  of  his  universal  plan.  These 
topics  Butler  enforces  with  a  power  not  less  admirable  than 

1  A  far  different  and  utterly  inconsistent  judgment  in  all  respects 
is  reported,  in  his  "  Life,"  to  have  fallen  from  him.  But  as  Professor 
Fitzgerald  shows,  it  is  so  strangely,  and,  indeed,  amusingly  con- 
trary to  the  above,  that  it  must  have  been  founded  on  some  mistake 
of  something  that  mast  have  been  said  in  conversation. 


82  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  Sagacity  with  which  he  traces  the  analogies  between  the 
"  Constitution  and  Course  of  Nature,"  and  tlie  disclosures  of 
"  Divine  Revelation."  These  last,  of  course,  form  the  staple 
of  the  argument ;  but  to  enforce  the  proper  deductions  from 
them,  the  above  favorite  topics  are  absolutely  essential. 

It  has  been  sometimes,  though  erroneously,  surmised,  that 
Butler  was  considerably  indebted  to  preceding  writers. 
That  in  the  progress  of  the  long  deistical  controversy  many 
theologians  should  have  caught  glimpses  of  the  same  line  of 
argument,  is  not  wonderful.  The  constant  iteration  by  the 
English  deists  of  that  same  class  of  difficulties  to  which  the 
Analogy  replies,  could  not  fail  to  lead  to  a  partial  percep- 
tion of  the  powerful  instrument  it  was  reserved  for  But- 
ler effectually  to  wield.  It  has  been  here  as  with  almost 
every  other  great  intellectual  achievement  of  man ;  many 
minds  have  been  simultaneously  engaged  by  the  natural 
progress  of  events  about  the  same  subject  of  thought ;  there 
have  been  "  coming  shadows  "  and  "  vague  anticipations," 
perhaps  even  simultaneous  inventions  or  discoveries  ;  and 
then  ensues  much  debate  as  to  the  true  claimants.  Thus  it 
was  in  relation  to  the  calculus,  the  analysis  of  water,  the  in- 
vention of  the  steam-engine,  and  the  discovery  of  Neptune. 

In  the  present  case,  however,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  merit  of  the  systematic  construction  of  the  entire  argu- 
ment rests  with  Butler.  Nor  would  it  have  much  detracted 
from  his  merit,  even  if  he  had  derived  far  larger  fragments 
of  the  fabric  from  his  contemporaries  than  we  have  any 
reason  to  believe  he  did.  They  would  have  been  but  single 
stones ;  the  architectural  genius  which  broi^ht  them  from 
their  distant  quarries  and  polished  them,  and  wrought  them 
into  a  massive  evidence,  was  his  alone. 

Professor  Fitzgerald  has  truly  remarked,  that  the  work  of 
Dr.  James  Foster  against  Tindal  (an  author  Butler  evi- 
dently has  constantly  in  his  eye),  presents  some  curious 
parallelisms  with    certain    passages   of  the  Analogy  ;    we 


JOSEPH   BUTLER.  88 

have  ourselves  noted  in  Conybeare's  reply  to  the  same  infi- 
del writer  (published  six  years  before  the  Analogy),  other 
parallelisms  not  less  striking.  But  it  seems  quite  improba- 
ble that  Butler  should  have  derived  aid  from  any  such 
sources,  since  his  work  was  being  excogitated  for  many  years 
before  it  was  published  ;  nay,  as  we  have  seen,  it  may  be 
conjectured  that  he  largely  transfused  into  it  portions  of  the 
sermons  delivered  so  long  before  at  the  Rolls,  and  of  which 
a  far  greater  number  must  have  been  preached  than  the 
fifteen  he  published ;  so  that,  perhaps,  it  is  more  near  the 
truth  to  say,  that  contemporary  writers  had  been  indebted 
to  him  than  he  to  them. 

The  "  pregnant  sentence "  from  Origen,  however,  is  not 
the  only  thing  which  may  have  suggested  to  Butler  his 
great  work.  Berkeley,  in  a  long  passage  of  the  "  Minute 
Philosopher,"  cited  by  Mr.  Fitzgerald,  clearly  lays  down 
the  principle  on  which  such  a  work  as  the  Analogy  might 
be  constructed. 

The  spirit  of  the  Analogy  is  admirable.  Though 
eminently  controversial  in  its  origin  and  purpose ;  and 
though  the  author  must  constantly  have  had  the  ^eistical 
writers  of  the  day  in  his  eye,  his  work  is  calm  and  dignified, 
and  divested  of  every  trace  of  the  controversial  spirit. 
He  does  not  even  mention  the  names  of  the  men  whose 
opinions  he  is  refuting ;  and  if  their  systems  had  been 
merely  some  new  minerals,  or  aerolites  di'opped  upon  the 
world  from  some  unknowa  sphere,  he  could  not  have  ana- 
lyzed them  with  less  of  passion. 

Of  Butler's  ethical  philosophy,  as  expounded  especially  in 
the  Sermons  on  Human  Nature  Sir  James  Mackintosh's 
remarks  prefixed  to  this  Encyclopaedia,  ^  supersede  further 
notice  in  the  present  brief  article.  But  it  may  be  remarked 
in  general  of  the  sermons  preached  at  the  Rolls,  that  though 

1  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 


84  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

not  so  much  read  (if  we  except,  perhaps,  the  three  just 
mentioned)  as  the  Analogy,  they  are  to  the  full  as  worthy 
of  beLag  read  ;  they  deserve  all  that  is  so  strikingly  said  of 
them  in  the  Preliminary  Dissertation.  Some  of  them  fill 
one  with  wonder  at  the  sagacity  with  which  the  moral  para- 
doxes in  human  nature  are  investigated  and  reconciled. 
Take,  for  example,  the  sermon  on  Balaam.  The  first  feel- 
ing in  many  a  mind  on  reading  the  history  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament is,  that  man  could  not  so  act  in  the  given  circum- 
stances. We  doubt  if  ever  any  man  deeply  pondered  the 
sermon  of  Butler,  in  which  he  dwells  on  the  equally  unac- 
countable phenomena  of  human  conduct,  less  observed,  in- 
deed, only  because  more  observable  —  and  questioned  any 
longer  man's  powers  of  self-deception,  even  to  such  feats  of 
folly  and  wickedness  as  are  recorded  of  the  prophet. 

The  editions  of  Butler's  writings,  separately  or  altogether, 
have  been  numerous,  and  it  is  impossible  within  the  limits  of 
this  article  to  specify  them ;  still  less  to  do  justice  to  the  liter- 
ature which  they  have  produced.  His  commentators  have 
been  many  and  most  illustrious;  seldom  has  a  man  who 
wrote  so  little,  engaged  so  many  great  minds  to  do  him 
homage,  by  becoming  his  exponents  and  annotators.  It 
may  be  permitted,  however,  to  mention  with  deserved  honor 
the  Remarks  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh  prefixed  to  this  En- 
cyclopaedia ;  the  "  Prelections "  of  Dr.  Chalmers  on  the 
Analogy,  the  valuable  "Essay"  of  Dr.  Hampden  on  the 
"  Philosophical  Evidence  of  Christianity ; "  some  beautiful 
applications  of  Butler's  principle  in  Whately's  "  Essays  on 
the  Peculiarities  of  Christianity ; "  and  the  admirable  edi- 
tion of  the  Analogy  by  Professor  Fitzgerald,  which  is 
enriched  by  many  very  acute  and  judicious  notes,  and  by  a 
copious  and  valuable  index. 


JOHN    HOWARD. 


John  Howard,  the  philanthropist,  belongs  to  the  rare 
order  of  men  who  have  won  from- the  world  special  titles  of 
distinction.  Many  persons  have  earned  the  title  of  Great, 
from  Macedonia's  madman  to"the  Swede  ;  but  mankind  has 
endowed  only  one  man  with  the  appellative  Just.  In  How- 
ard's case  the  complimentary  addition  of  the  Philanthropist 
is  not  a  mere  figure  of  speech. 

Howard  was  born  at  Enfield,  (not  at  Hackney,  as  the 
monument  in  St.  Paul's  asserts,)  where  his  father,  a  retired 
London  merchant,  had  a  country  house.  He  was  born  on 
the  2d  of  September,  1726.  His  father  was  wealthy,  and 
was  elected  to  serve  as  sheriff;  but  the  Test  Act  being  then 
in  force,  he  paid  the  fine  usually  paid  by  Dissenters  to 
escape  that  honor,  a  policy  which  his  son  afterwards,  happily 
for  the  world,  refused  to  follow.  Howard  was  a  sickly 
child,  and  country  air  was  found  necessary  to  his  health. 
He  was  removed  to  Cardington,  a  village  in  Bedfordshire, 
near  to  Woburn,  where  his  father  had  a  small  estate.  The 
fiacts  of  his  early  life  are  few,  and  are  soon  told.  He  grew 
in  years  and  strength,  a  quiet,  simple,  original  boy;  not 
bright,  not  vigorous,  not  ambitious.  From  his  two  school- 
masters, the  Rev.  John  Horselcy,  (author  of  a  Latin  Gram- 
mar and  translator  of  a  version  of  the  New  Testament,)  and 
8  (85) 


86  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

Mr.  John  Eames,  F.  E.  S.,  he  learned  but  little  Latin  and 
less  Greek ;  yet  even  in  his  early  years  he  acquired  some 
knowledge  of  living  languages,  and  a  fair  acquaintance  with 
natural  science,  geography,  and  medicine.  At  sixteen,  he 
was  apprenticed  to  a  grocer  in  the  city,  paying  seven  hun- 
dre4  pounds  as  a  premium.  But  his  father  now  died,  and 
he  was  his  own  master.  He  therefore  bought  off  his 
apprenticeship,  travelled  into  France  and  Italy,  bought  pic- 
tures, visited  famous  churches  and  cities,  and  after  an  ab- 
sence almost  of  two  years'  duration,  during  which  he  per- 
fected himself  in  French,  so  as  to  speak  the  language  like  a 
native,  he  returned  to  England.  Here  he  lodged  at  Stoke- 
Newington,  studied  medicine  and  meteorology,  put  himself 
on  a  diet  of  bread  and  tea,  fell  seriously  ill,  and  married  his 
nurse,  an  old  woman,  who  was  also  a  confirmed  invalid. 
He  was  twenty-five,  she  was'about  fifty-three.  He  married 
her  because  he  believed  that  she  had  saved'  his  life,  and 
that  no  other  return  for  her  motherly  kindness  was  sufficient. 
She  lived  three  years  as  a  wife,  when  her  malady  wore 
her  out,  and  she  w^as  buried  in  the  churchyard  of  St. 
Mary's,  Whitechapel.  A  plain  tombstone  marks  the  spot. 
At  her  death  Howai-d  broke  up  his  house.  The  earthquake 
at  Lisbon  had  just  occurred ;  that  earthquake,  the  effect  of 
which  on  the  minds  of  men  Goethe  has  so  powerfully  de- 
scribed in  his  Wahrheit  und  Dichtung.  Philanthropic 
impulse  was  stirred  in  Howard ;  he  believed  that  he  could 
help  to  alleviate  the  calamity,  and  he  took  a  berth  in  the 
"  Hanover."  But  the  Seven  Years'  War  was  then  raging. 
French,  Austrian,  and  Prussian  armies  were  fighting  in 
various  parts  of  Europe,  and  English  and  French  cruisers 
swept  the  seas  in  every  direction.  Providence  threw  the 
"  Hanover  "  in  the  way  of  a  French  privateer ;  she  and  her 
passengers  were  carried  into  Brest.  The  crew  and  passen- 
gers were  treated  with  extreme  cruelty,  were  hurried  from 
place  to  place,  starved,  and  cast  into  loathsome  dungeons. 


JOHN   HOWARD.  87 

Howard's  heart  almost  broke  with  indignation  at  the  treat- 
ment suffered  by  his  gallant  and  unhappy  countrymen,  "  I 
had  evidence,"  he  says,  "  of  their  being  treated  with  such 
barbarity  that  many  hundreds  had  perished,  and  that  thirty- 
six  were  buried  in  a  hole  in  J)inan  in  one  day."  When  he 
obtained  his  release  on  parol,  he  went  to  the  government, 
described  in  powerful  language  the  scenes  he  had  witnessed, 
and  compelled  the  Commissioners  of  Sick  and  Wounded 
Seamen  to  take  measures  for  securing  an  exchange  of  pris- 
oners. A  naval  officer  replaced  himself;  and  in  a  few  days 
he  had  the  satisfaction  to  hear  of  the  release  of  his  fellow- 
captives  in  Brittany. 

Howard  still  retreated  from  public  life.  His  scientific 
studies  were  continued,  and  on  May  13,  1756,  he  was 
elected  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  to  the  Transactions 
of  which  he  contributed  thi'ee  papers.  Two  yeai's  later  he 
married  again.  "My  second  wife  was  Henrietta  Leeds, 
whom  a  good  God  gave  me  the  second  of  May."  Such  are 
his  own  words.  They  lived  together  in  the  seclusion  of  a 
country  house  for  nine  years,  when  their  only  child,  a  son, 
was  born,  and  the  mother  died  in  the  exhaustion  of  nature. 
Howard's  public  career  began  after  her  death.  During  her 
life  his  energies  were  chiefly  confined  to  the  village  of  Car- 
dington,  in  which  he  commenced  a  reform,  then  new  and 
startling,  but  which  has,  since  his  age,  and  greatly  through 
his  example,  received  a  happy  development.  He  was  the 
first  builder  of  model  cottages. 

When  Howard  went  to  reside  at  Cardington,  that  village 
was  about  as  filthy,  wretched,  and  unwholesome  as  any  spot 
in  England.  The  neighboring  gentry  followed  the  hounds, 
and  exacted  their  rents.  The  poor  were  idle,  dirty,  im- 
moral ;  the  men  passed  their  days  in  the  ale-house,  and 
their  nights  in  the  preserves ;  the  women  were  ill-used,  the 
children  ignorant  and  neglected.  Howard's  property  was 
small  in  the  district  compared  with  that  of  his  neighbors, 


88  NEW  B10GKA.PHIES. 

and  before  he  began  his  plan,  he  wisely  added  to  his  estate 
by  two  purchases,  at  once  to  increase  his  influence  in  the 
place,  and  to  obtain  a  larger  field  for  operations.  H6  then 
built  a  school  for  boys  and  a  school  for  girls,  procured  good 
teachers,  and  invited  the  villagers  (not  merely  his  own 
tenants)  to  send  their  children,  his  only  conditions  being 
regularity,  cleanliness,  and  attendance  at  some  place  of  wor- 
ship on  the  Sunday.  At  the  same  time  he  pulled  down  the 
wretched  hovels  in  which  his  poorer  tenants  lived  —  hovels 
of  a  single  room  in  which  father,  mother,  and  grown  up 
children  had  to  eat  and  sleep  —  and  erected  larger  and  more 
commodious  cottages  to  replace  them.  With  the  sure  instinct 
of  a  reformer,  he  saw  that  such  hovels  were  not,  never 
could  be  happy  homes,  —  residences  in  which  men  with  any 
sense  of  shame,  any  feeling  of  self-respect,  could  live  con- 
tentedly while  the  ale-house  offered  its  cheerful  lights  and 
jovial  company  as  a  change.  He  therefore  undertook  to 
remove  them.  His  model  cottages  were  occupied  as  fast  as 
they  were  raised.  They  cost  more  money,  yet  he  did  not 
raise  the  rent ;  for,  in  spite  of  his  commercial  training,  he 
had  scruples  about  putting  out  money  at  interest,  and  looked 
upon  wealth  as  a  sacred  and  moral  deposit  placed  in  his 
hands  for  the  benefit  of  mankind,  not  for  his  own  private 
use  and  pleasure.  In  a  few  years  some  of  his  rich  friends 
and  neighbors,  especially  Samuel  Whitbread,  (the  famous 
brewer,  and  father  of  the  celebrated  politician,  Whitbread,) 
seeing  the  success  of  his  scheme,  lent  a  hand  in  the  good 
work.  The  schools  flourished ;  the  children  grew  clean  and 
rosy ;  poaching  became  rare  ;  the  chapels  and  churches 
were  filled ;  little  patches  of  garden  rose  at  the  cottage 
doors ;  ale-houses  lost  some  of  their  strong  attractions  ;  and 
Cardington  began  to  strike  the  stranger's  eye  as  a  pretty, 
clean,  and  prosperous  village. 

After  his  second  wife's  death  Howard  busied  himself  with 
his  books,  his  schools,  and  cottages.     He  travelled  into  Hoi- 


JOHN   HOWARD.  89 

land.  He  went  to  France,  to  Switzerland,  to  Italy ;  but  he 
found  no  rest  for  the  sole  of  his  foot.  He  returned  as  far  as 
Holland  (his  favorite  country  next  to  his  own),  and  went 
back  thence  to  Rome  and  Naples.  He  admired  the  Apollo 
and  the  Gladiator,  and  he  felt  the  usual  raptures  before  the 
paintings  of  Titian,  Guido,  and  Raphael.  He  saw  the  Pope 
and  the  Pretender ;  the  first  "  a  worthy  good  man ; "  the 
second  "  a  mere  sot,  very  stupid,  dull,  and  bending  double." 
He  went  up  the  mountain  to  Vesuvius,  and  down  the  lagune 
to  Venice.  He  came  home  through  Munich,  Augsburg,  and 
the  Rhine  —  came  home  to  find  himself  unexpectedly  named 
Sheriff  of  Bedford,  and  to  begin  his  public  career.  This 
was  in  1773.  He  accepted  the  office  of  Sheriff,  though  a 
Dissenter,  resolved  not  to  take  the  usual  sacraments,  but  to 
brave  a  bad  law,  and,  if  prosecuted,  defend  himself  in  the 
courts.  No  one  prosecuted  him.  When  the  assizes  opened 
he  sat  in  the  court,  and  when  the  trials  of  the  day  were 
over  he  descended  into  the  jail  to  see  in  what  state  the  pris- 
oners were.  It  was  the  prison  into  which  Bunyan  had  been 
thrown,  and  in  which  lie  wrote  his  immortal  Pilgrim's  Pro- 
gress. Howard  found  it,  like  all  the  jails  of  the  time, 
dirty  and  close,  Avithout  decent  accommodation  for  the  wo- 
men, and  with  scarcely  any  practical  separation  of  the  two 
sexes.  The  air  was  bad,  the  food  worse,  the  water  intoler- 
able. The  fees  were  high,  and  rigorously  exacted ;  the 
iailer  and  his  subordinates  living  on  the  wretched  wages 
they  could  wring  from  the  misery  of  the  poor  prisoners. 
What  most  of  aU  astonished  his  humane  heart,  and  vioiated 
his  sense  of  right,  was  the  fact  that  some  of  the  accused 
who  had  been  freed  by  judge  and  jury,  and  who  had  left 
the  court  without  a  stain,  were  kept  in  the  horrid  jail  (for 
longer  or  shorter  periods,  according  to  their  circumstances, 
but  in  some  cases  for  years)  until  they  paid  the  fees  of  jail 
delivery.  Howard  instantly  brought  this  monstrous  form  of 
wrong  before  the  county  magistrates,  and  proposed  that  an 


90  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

order  should  be  issued  for  the  discharge  of  these  innocent 
suiFerers,  and  that  a  rule  should  be  adopted  in  future  for  the 
instant  liberation  in  open  court  of  all  such  persons  as  were 
found  not  guilty.  The  magistrates  were  startled  at  such 
bold  reforms  ;  the  jailer  protested  against  the  loss  of  his  fees, 
which  were  his  income,  his  means  of  life,  as  he  had  no  salary 
from  the  county.  The  clerk  of  assize  put  in  a  similar  pro- 
test. Howard  proposed  to  redeem  these  fees  by  paying  reg- 
ular salaries  to  these  servants  of  the  public ;  but  the  magis- 
trates knew  of  no  precedent  for  such  a  course,  and  without 
a  precedent  they  could  not  act.  Howard  undertook  to  find 
it,  if  such  existed  in  any  neighboring  county.  He  went  to 
Cambridge,  to  Huntingdon,  to  Northampton,  to  Leicester, 
and  to  Nottingham,  and  this  journey  gradually  extended  to 
every  town  in  England  where  was  then  a  prison.  The 
object  of  his  search  eluded  inquiry.  He  could  find  no  pre- 
cedent for  charging  the  county  with  the  wages  of  its  servants ; 
but  he  discovered  so  many  abuses  in  the  management  of 
prisons  which  imagination  had  never  conceived,  and  so  many 
sufferings  of  which  the  general  public  knew  nothing,  and  of 
which  the  law  took  no  account,  that  he  determined  to  devote 
to  the  examination  of  these  wrongs,  and  the  reform  of  these 
abuses,  whatever  time  and  money  might  be  needful.  The 
task  cost  him  a  fortune,  and  the  remaining  years  of  his  life. 
Tiie  inquiry  now  attracted  public  attention.  At  the  close 
of  his  first  rapid  survey  of  our  prisons,  the  House  of  Com- 
mons resolved  itself  into  a  committee,  and  heard  his  report 
at  the  bar  of  the  House.  Popham,  member  for  Taunton, 
had  already  forced  the  unwilling  legislature  to  discuss  the 
propriety  of  paying  fixed  salaries  out  of  the  county  rates ; 
but  the  House  had  dropped  the  bill.  Howard's  revelations 
completed  Popham's  arguments.  Nearly  fifty  years  before 
that  time  the  House  had  appointed  a  committee  to  inquire 
into  the  state  of  Newgate,  the  Marshalsea,  and  other  London 
jails,  when  abuses  came  to  light  which  caused  the  House  to 


JOHN   HOWARD.  91 

order  the   arrest  of  several  governors  of  jails,  who  were 
tried  for  high   misdemeanors.^ 

But  the  public,  as  well  as  the  parliament,  shrank  from  the 
investigation  of  scenes  so  horrid,  so  that  after  an  explosion 
of  virtue  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Oglethorpe,  magnificently  re- 
warded by  a  couplet  in  Pope,  the  subject  was  allowed  to  die 
out  of  recollection  until  the  researches  of  Howard  and  the 
zeal  of  Popham  raised  it  in  a  more  favorable  age.  When 
the  House  resumed.  Sir  Thomas  Clavering,  at  the  instance 
of  the  committee,  moved  "  that  John  Howard,  Esq.,  be  called 
to  the  bar,  and  that  Mr.  Speaker  do  acquaint  him  that  the 
House  are  very  sensible  of  the  humanity  and  zeal  which 
have  led  him  to  visit  the  several  gaols  of  this  kingdom,  and 
to  communicate  to  the  House  the  interesting  observations 
which  he  has  made  upon  that  subject."  This  vote  put  the 
seal  of  pubhc  sanction  on  his  inquiries,  so  that  his  subse- 
quent investigations  had  a  sort  of  semi-oflBcial  character,  of 
vast  use  to  him  in  dealing  with  morose  jailers  and  impracti- 
cable magistrates  of  the  very  old  school. 

From  St.  Stephen's  Howard  went  to  the  Marshalsea; 
afterwards  to  each  of  the  London  prisons,  which  he  minutely 
examined.  From  London  he  passed  to  the  north  of  Eng- 
land, whence  he  was  recalled  by  the  passing  of  two  new  bills, 
based  on  Popham's  abandoned  measure  of  the  previous  ses- 
sion and  on  his  own  communications  to  the  House.  The  first 
bill  provided  for  the  liberation,  free  of  ail  charges,  of  every 
nrisoner  against  whom  the  grand-jury  failed  to  find  a  true 
Dill,  giving  the  jailer  a  sum  from  the  county  rate  in  lieu  of 
the  abolished  fees.  The  second  bill  required  justices  of  the 
peace  to  see  that  the  walls  and  ceiUngs  of  all  prisons  within 
their  jurisdiction  were  scraped  and  whitewashed  once  a 
year  at  least ;  that  the  rooms  were  regularly  cleaned  and 
ventilated  ;  that  infirmaries  were  provided  for  the  sick ;  and 

1  Reports  of  the  Committee  appointed  to  inquire  into  the  State  of 
the  Gaols,  1729. 


92  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

proper  care  taken  to  get  them  medical  advice;  that  the 
naked  should  be  clotlied ;  that  underground  dungeons  should 
be  used  as  little  as  could  be ;  and  generally  that  such  courses 
should  be  taken  as  would  tend  to  restore  and  preserve  the 
health  of  the  prisoners.  That  such  simple  provisions  should 
have  been  denied  in  Christian  England,  and  in  the  days  of 
Addison  and  Johnson,  is  not  easy  to  conceive,  after  the 
changes  of  eighty  years,  brought  about  through  the  exer- 
tions of  one  strong  man.  Yet  the  corroborative  evidence  of 
the  state  of  prisons  leaves  no  room  for  doubt.  Defoe  and 
Fielding  have  both  left  descriptions  of  jail  life,  which,  though 
relieved  by  gross  humor,  and  animated  by  studies  of  eccen- 
tric character,  are  not  less  revolting  than  the  plain  and  tragic 
revelations  of  Howard.  Men  were  callous  to  sufferings 
which  seemed  inevitable  to  misfortune,  as  well  as  to  crime. 
Even  horrible  catastrophes,  when  they  occurred,  excited  no 
more  than  a  passing  interest.  The  jail  distemper  always 
raged  more  or  less  in  the  county  town,  and  especially  during 
assizes.  Judges  and  juries  were  sometimes  swept  away  by 
the  awful  pest ;  ^  and  yet  no  one  cared  to  remove  the  causes 
of  the  jail  distemper,  until  the  Howard-Popham  bill  was 
carried  on  the  2d  of  June,  1774. 

It  was  one  thing  to  have  the  bill  carried  in  the  House  of 
Commons  ;  it  was  another  to  have  it  carried  into  the  jails. 
Most  of  the  jailers  were  ignorant,  rapacious  fellows ;  and 
some  of  them  were  women  —  as  a  rule  more  ignorant  and 
rapacious  than  the  men.  ♦The  new  law  struck  at  their 
interests,  and  cordial  feeUng  towards  it  was  not  expected 
from  human  frailty.  Howard  resolved  to  see  it  executed 
with  his  own  eyes  ;  he  caused  the  provisions  of  the  act  to  be 
printed  at  his  private  cost,  in  large  type,  and  he  sent  a  copy 
to  every  jailer  and  warden  in  the  three  kingdoms,  so  that  no 
one  could  be  able  to  plead  ignorance  of  the  law,  if  detected 

1  Barker's  Chronide,  353. 


JOHN    HOWARD.  93 

in  the  flagrant  violation  of  its  provisions.  He  then  recom- 
menced his  inspections  —  travelled  into  the  west  of  Eng- 
land, into  Ireland  and  Scotland.  Beyond  the  special  cause 
to  which  he  had  given  up  his  time,  he  took  little  interest  in 
politi'cal  matters,  though  he  entertained  strong  opinions  about 
the  unjust  aggression  of  the  government  in  America,  and 
expressed  these  opinions  in  a  way  to  render  the  possibility 
of  his  appearance  in  the  House  of  Commons  as  an  indepen- 
dent member  extremely  distasteful  to  ministers.  When, 
therefore,  an  election  took  place  for  Bedford,  and  Howard's 
friends  proposed  him  as  a  candidate,  all  the  arts  of  corrup- 
tion, were  used  to  keep  him  out.  He  was  nevertheless 
elected.  On  the  return  being  disputed,  the  election  com- 
mittee, which  was  completely  under  the  minister's  hand, 
allowed  a  number  of  pauj^er  votes  which  had  been  bought  up 
and  recorded  in  favor  of  the  opposition  candidates,  though 
these  votes  had  been  refused  before — just  enough  to  unseat 
Howard  by  a  minority  of  four  votes.  "  I  was  made  a  vic- 
tim by  the  ministry,"  he  writes  to  a  friend ;  "  most  surely  I 
should  not  have  fallen  in  with  their  severe  measures  relative 
to  the  Americans;  and  my  constant  declaration  tl^t  not  one 
emolument  of  five  shillings,  were  I  in  parliament,  would  I 
ever  accept  of,  marked  me  out  as  an  object  of  their  aversion." 
It  was  a  fortunate  decision,  as  it  left  him  to  his  own  peculiar 
work.  Set  free  from  all  other  occupations,  instead  of  em- 
bodying his  observations  on  English  prisons  at  once  in  a 
book,  he  thought  it  better  to  make  a  tour  of  France,  the 
Austrian  Netherlands,  Holland,  and  Germany,  to  see  the 
most  famous  and  infamous  prisons  on  the  continent  of 
Europe,  collect  their  various  laws  and  regulations,  and  com- 
pare their  structure,  their  action,  and  results  with  those  of 
our  own.  In  Paris  he  was  denied  access  to  the  prisons  ;  but 
looking  over  the  old  legislation  on  the  subject,  he  found  a 
provision  in  an  act  of  1717,  that  any  person  wishing  to  dis- 
tribute alms  to  the  prisoners  was  to  be  admitted  to  the  inte- 


94  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

rior,  and  allowed  to  dispense  his  bounty  with  his  own  hand. 
The  law  had  fallen  into  disuse,  and  was  unknown  to  the 
keepers.  Howard  appealed  to  higher  authority,  and  the 
validity  of  the  old  act  was  allowed.  At  some  expense  in 
charities,  he  inspected  the  Bicetre,  the  Force  I'Eveque,  and 
other  places  of  confinement ;  but  neither  money  nor  interest 
could  open  the  Bastile  to  his  inspection.  He  once  stepped 
inside  its  gates  at  some  personal  risk.  A  suppressed  pamphlet, 
describing  the  interior,  written  by  a  man  who  had  suffered 
confinement,  he  obtained  after  much  trouble,  brought  back 
to  England,  translated,  and  gave  it  to  the  world  in  his  own 
book,  an  offence  which  the  French  government  never  forgot 
and  never  forgave.  At  Ghent  he  examined  with  deep 
interest  the  Great  Reformatory  Prison,  a  model  for  all 
Europe,  combining  the  elements  of  industiy  and  privation, 
which  are  still  esteemed  the  most  efficacious  means  of  refor- 
mation.  At  Amsterdam  he  was  struck  with  the  slight 
amount  of  crime  in  the  Dutch  cities,  contrasting  it  as  he  did 
so  fearfully  with  the  crime  in  his  own  country.  For  one 
hundred  years  then  past,  the  executions  in  Amsterdam,  a 
city  of  250,000  inhabitants,  had  averaged  no  more  than  one 
in  twelve  months.  London  with  its  750,000  inhabitants,  had 
an  average  of  twenty-nine  and  a  half  executions  a  year,  or, 
reckoning  population  against  population,  ten  in  London  to 
one  in  Amsterdam.^  In  the  United  Provinces  he  found  that 
the  industrial  system  penetrated  the  jail.  In  England  we 
thought  only  of  punishing  offences ;  there  they  sought  to 
reclaim  offenders  for  society.  We  put  them  into  dungeons  ; 
they  put  them  into  workshops.  They  made  the  criminals 
work  their  way  back  to  Freedom.  Their  professed  max- 
ims was  —  "  Make  them  dihgent  and  they  will  be  honest." 
Howard  did  not  forget  the  hint.  In  Germany  he  found 
little  that  was  useful,  much  that  was  disgusting.     In  Hano- 

1  Janssen's  Tables,  1772. 


JOHN   HOWARD.  95 

ver  and  Osnaburgh,  under  English  rule,  he  found  traces  of 
torture.  Hamburgh  was  less  revolting,  as  were  generally 
the  commercial  cities.  He  returned  to  England  with  his 
papers,  plans,  and  rules,  a  voluminous  collection,  as  original 
in  character  as  it  was  humane  in  purpose ;  but  before  put- 
ting his  materials  in  the  printer's  hands,  he  undertook 
another  comprehensive  tour  through  England,  revising  his 
former  observations,  adding  new  notes  to  the  record,  reliev- 
ing distress,  liberating  poor  debtors,  superintending  the  oper- 
ation of  the  new  jail  act ;  and  when  these  enormous  labors 
were  completed  after  seven  months  of  daily  toil,  the  gains 
from  this  cai'cful  revision  seemed  so  important  to  his  mind, 
that  he  resolved  to  give  his  continental  experiences  the  bene- 
fit of  a  similar  collation,  and  also  extend  his  researches  into 
some  countries  the  prisons  of  which  he  had  not  yet  seen.  He 
set  out  for  Lyons,  crossed  to  Geneva  (where  he  was  rejoiced 
as  a  republican  to  find  only  five  persons  in  confinement), 
whence  he  passed  on  to  Berne,  through  cantons  in  which 
there  was  not  a  single  prisoner ;  he  went  on  to  Soleure  and 
Basle,  delighted  with  the  cleanliness,  the  Christian  disci- 
pline, and  considerate  government  of  all  the  jails  of  Swit- 
zerland, and  struck  into  Germany  and  Holland,  visiting  or 
revisiting  the  most  celebrated  prisons.  He  returned  to  Lon- 
don, and  published  his  remarkable  book.  The  State  of 
Prisons  in  England  and  Wales,  in  1777.  In  collecting  his 
materials  he  had  spent  between  three  and  four  years,  travel- 
ling not  less  than  13,418  miles.  He  contrasted  in  its  pages 
the  condition  of  our  own  and  of  foreign  prisons,  very  much 
to  the  disadvantage  of  the  former.  "  The  reader,"  he  says, 
"  will  scarcely  feel  from  my  narrative  the  same  emotion  of 
shame  and  regret  as  the  comparison  excited  in  me  on  be- 
holding the  difference  with  my  own  eyes ;  but  from  the  ac- 
count I  have  given  him  of  foreign  prisons  he  may  judge 
whether  a  design  of  reforming  our  own  be  merely  visionary 
—  whether  idleness,  debauchery,  disease,  and  famine  be  the 


96  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

necessary  attendants  of  a  prison,  or  only  connected  with  it 
in  our  own  ideas,  for  want  of  a  more  perfect  knowledge 
and  more  enlarged  views." 

The  book  made  a  sensation.  One  of  the  first  results  was 
to  give  a  new  impulse  to  the  question  —  "What  to  do  with 
our  convicts  ?  America  refused  to  take  them  any  longer ; 
Australia  had  not  yet  offered  itself  as  a  receptacle  for  the 
rascality  of  England.  Government  was  at  its  wit's  end; 
and  crotchety  people  were  urging  every  kind  of  scheme  on 
its  attention.  A  hulk  (the  "  Justicia ")  had  been  already 
stationed  in  the  river,  off  the  arsenal  of  Woolwich,  for  the 
reception  of  convicts,  who  were  treated  as  in  the  worst 
prisons  of  the  old  school,  so  that  every  kind  of  disorder 
existed  in  the  ship.  Howard  hoped  for  no  success  without 
a  change  of  system ;  but  his  continental  experience  con- 
vinced him  that  home  discipline  was  better  for  the  criminal 
than  deportation  to  a  new  country ;  and,  after  much  con- 
sideration by  ministers,  his  idea  of  trying  the  discipline  of 
hard  work  was  adopted,  and  Sir  William  Blackstone  and 
Mr.  Ed^n  were  requested  to  make  out  the  draft  of  a  bill  for 
the  creation  of  a  fitting  establishment.  A  new  prison  was 
needed  for  the  new  plans ;  no  jail  in  the  country  could 
answer  for  a  trial ;  and  Howard  volunteered  to  go  abroad 
and  collect  plans  and  other  precise  information. 

He  went  to  Amsterdam,  and  carefully  examined  the  spin- 
houses  and  rasp-houses  for  which  that  city  was  famous.  He 
passed  into  Prussia,  Saxony,  Bohemia,  and  Austria,  through 
the  lines  of  the  German  armies  commanded  by  the  Great 
Frederick  and  the  Emperor  Joseph  II.  His  fame  had  gone 
before  him,  and  he  was  received  with  the  greatest  distinc- 
tion in  Berlin  and  Vienna.  He  spent  a  morning  with  the 
Prince  of  Prussia,  and  dined  witli  Maria  Theresa.  From 
Vienna  he  went  to  Italy,  which  he  traversed  from  Venice  to 
Naples,  inspecting  prisons,  hospitals,  and  workhouses,  and 
carefully  hoarding  up  the  peculiar  merit  or  fault  of  each,  for 


JOHN    HOWARD.  97 

the  use  of  Sii"  William  Blackstone  and  his  colleague.  On  his 
return  from  Naples  towards  Leghorn,  he  encountered  a  vio- 
lent storm,  which  raged  for  three  days  with  great  fury.  The 
little  shallop,  unmanageable,  was  driven  on  the  Tuscan  coast, 
but  the  inhabitants,  fearful  of  plague,  refused  to  allow  the 
passengers  to  land.  Driven  back  again  upon  the  storm,  they 
were  carried  by  its  force  to  the  African  shore,  to  be  again 
driven  off  by  the  same  fears.  They  had  started  from  Civita 
Vecchia  while  the  pest  was  raging  there,  and  their  foul  bill 
of  health  alarmed  Christian  and  Mohammedan  alike.  How- 
ard suffered  fearfully  in  health  by  this  trial ;  and,  after  his 
prison  labors  were  accomplished,  and  his  health  fuUy  restored, 
he  turned  to  the  new  and  fearful  enemy,  and  finally  lost  his 
life  in  an  attempt  to  discover  the  cause  and  the  remedy  for 
plague. 

During  this  rapid  continental  tour  he  travelled  4,600 
miles.  While  in  France  his  attention  was  again  drawn  to 
his  old  subject  —  the  infamous  neglect  and  unchristian  treat- 
ment of  prisoners  of  war.  He  was  told  that  these  prisoners 
were  treated  worse  in  England  than  elsewhere ;  that  their 
loyalty  was  tampered  with ;  and  that  they  were  systemati- 
cally ill-used  in  order  to  compel  them  to  forswear  their 
allegiance,  and  enter  the  English  service.  Burning  with 
indignation,  he  went  to  the  Commissionei'S  of  Sick  and 
Wounded  Seamen,  who  expressed  their  astonishment  at  such 
assertions ;  and,  on  his  saying  that  he  meant  to  look  into  this 
affair  for  himself,  they  offered  to  assist  his  inquiries.  Our 
prisoners  of  war  had  reason  to  be  grateful  for  his  interference. 

The  information  obtained  during  his  foreign  tour  was 
placed  at  the  service  of  the  House  of  Commons.  A  bill 
was  introduced  and  passed  for  building  two  penitentiary 
houses  in  Middlesex,  Sun-ey,  Kent,  or  Essex  (as  might  be 
determined  afterwards),  in  which  to  try  the  experiment  of 
a  discipline  of  work.  Howard  was  appointed  first  super- 
visor of  this  Act ;   Mr.   Whatley  of  the    Foundling  Hos- 

9 


§8  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

pital,  second ;  and  Howard  was  allowed  to  name  the  third, 
Dr.  Fothergill.^  The  scheme,  however,  under  official  re- 
straints, proceeded  slowly ;  Howard  felt  that  his  life  was 
being  wasted  in  small  quarrels  and  unimportant  discussions 
with  Mr.  Whatley  as  to  the  sites  of  the  proposed  peniten- 
tiaries ;  and  both  Sir  William  Blackstone  and  Dr.  Fother- 
gill  dying  while  Mr.  Whatley  was  disputing,  he  wrote  to 
Lord  Bathurst,  president  of  the  council,  begging  the  king's 
permission  to  resign  his  office.  An  impulse,  however,  had 
been  given.  Howard's  ideas  were  adopted  in  many  places. 
In  all  the  new  prisons  erected  from  that  time  provision  was 
made  for  setting  the  criminals  at  work.  He  turned  his  face 
to  the  continent,  with  a  view  to  collect  whatever  might  be 
useful  to  his  counti-ymen  in  those  lands  which  he  had  not  yet 
visited ;  and  began  a  new  and  longer  journey,  which  gradu- 
ally embraced  the  whole  circle  of  Europe,  his  route  lying 
through  Holland,  Schleswig,  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden, 
Russia,  Poland ;  thence  back  to  London,  and  so  on  to  Por- 
tugal, Spain,  and  France,  and  the  Austrian  Netherlands. 
This  journey  was  full  of  curious  and  romantic  incidents.  At 
its  completion  Howard  gave  his  collections  to  the  2>ublic  in 
a  new  edition  of  his  State  of  Prisons,  with  appendices. 

Being  now  free  from  serious  responsibility  as  regards  the 
subject  of  prisons,  and  being  determined  not  to  enter  parlia- 
ment (as  he  was  again  requested  to  do),  he  reverted  to  the 
terrible  idea  of  the  Plague.  English  commerce  with  the 
Levant  was  rapidly  extending,  and  serious  thoughts  were 
entertained  in  official  circles  of  establishing  a  regular  quar- 
antine (as  at  Marseilles  and  Venice)  against  all  vessels 
arriving  from  the  East.  But  nothing  was  known  in  Eng- 
land about  lazarettos  and  quarantine  establishments ;  and 
the  plague  itself  (from  vague  historical  recollections  of  the 
I(Ondon' pests  of  1603  and  1665,  when  the  disease  swept 

1  Stat.  19  Geo.  III.  Cap.  74. 


JOHN   HOWARD.  99 

away  each  time  one  fifth  of  the  population)  ^  was  regarded 
with  a  terror  more  superstitious  than  rational.     Government 
desired    information ;   Howard  offered    to    procure   it,    and 
equipped  himself  for  the  journey.     He  proposed  to  begin 
his  studies  at  Marseilles  with  the  newest  of  the  lazarettos  ; 
afterwards  to  visit  those  of  Venice  and  Leghorn ;  and_,  hav- 
ing gained   all  preliminary   information   in  these   cities,  to 
proceed  to  Smyrna  and  Constantinople,  the  proper  home  of 
the  plague,  and  there  study  its  symptoms  and  modes  of 
treatment.      The    French    government,    however,   mindful 
of  the  Bastile  pamphlet,  refused  him   a  passport ;  so  that, 
instead  of  gaining  facilities  for  inspecting  the  lazaretto  at 
Marseilles,   he   was  peremptorily  forbidden  to  set  foot   in 
the  territory  of  France.     Lord  Carmarthen,  our  ambassador 
iu  Paris,  tried  in  vain  to  remove  the  ban ;  but,  as  Howard 
considered  that  his  journey  would  lose  much  of  its  interest, 
and  its  chief  use  as  regarded  his  own  country,  if  he  missed 
the  fine  lazaretto  at  Marseilles,  he  defied  the  threats  held 
out,  put  himself  in  a  good  disguise,  and  entered  France  in 
the  usual  way  among  travellers  in  a  diligence.     A  police 
agent  attended  him  to  Paris,  for  the  French  ambassador  at 
the  Hague  had  received  intelligence  from  the  M.  Le  Noir, 
director  of  police  in  Piiris,  to  keep  watch  over  his  move- 
ments ;  and  it  was  by  a  miracle  of  rapid  and  courageous 
action  that  he  escaped  a  dungeon  in  the  Bastile.     Some- 
times as  a  French  physician,  sometimes  as  an  exquisite  of 
the  Faubourg  St.  Germain,  he  traversed  France  as  far  as 
Marseilles,  obtained  admission  to  the  lazaretto,  and  shelter 
in  the  house  of  a  Huguenot  pastor,  although  the  police  were 
on  the  look-out  for  him,  with  a  description  of  \^g  person  in 
their  hands.      His  courage,  his  disguise,  and   his  perfect 
manners,  threw  them  off  their  guai'd ;  yet  the  risks  he  ran 
were  very  serious,  and  he  breathed  more  freely  when  he 

1  Fetty's  Political  Arithmeiic,  1686. 


100  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

had  crossed  the  frontier.  "  I  have  now  taken  a  final  leave 
of  France,"  he  wTote  to  a  friend  from  Leghorn ;  -"  I  am  sen- 
sible that  I  ran  a  great  risk,  but  I  accomplished  ray  object. 
Happy  was  I  to  arrive  at  Nice,  out  of  the  country  of  a 
deceitful,  jealous,  and  ungenerous  people."  He  went  to 
Florence,  Rome  (where  he  had  an  interview  with  Pope 
Pius),  and  Naples ;  and  thence  to  Smyrna,  where  his  skill 
as  a  doctor  opened  all  the  prisons  and  hospitals  to  his  in- 
spection. He  remained  at  Smyrna,  performing  a  few  simple 
cures  which  rumor  vastly  magnified,  until  a  fatal  form  of 
the  plague  broke  out,  and  he  had  first-rate  opportunities  of 
studying  it.  He  went  on  to  Constantinople,  whither  the 
fame  of  his  cures  had  gone  before,  and  as  soon  as  he  arrived 
he  was  called  in  by  a  great  pasha  to  treat  the  case  of  his 
daughter,  who  had  been  given  over,  it  was  said,  by  all  the 
Italian  doctors.  She  recovered ;  and  of  course  Howard's 
fame  rose  with  his  wonderful  work.  He  confined  his  visits, 
however,  to  the  pest-houses,  the  prisons,  and  hospitals ;  he 
said  he  was  only  a  physician  to  the  poor.  Our  ambassj^dor. 
Sir  Robert  Ainslie,  aware  of  his  patriotic  and  humane 
object,  offered  him  a  home  at  the  embassy.  This  he  de- 
clined, as  being  unwilling  to  expose  another  to  the  fearful 
risk  of  contagion,  and  took  up  his  residence  in  the  house  of 
a  physician,  to  whom  he  could  communicate  the  course  of 
his  daily  experience,  as  well  to  receive  sound  advice  as  to 
prepare  his  host  for  prompt  action  in  case  he  brought  the 
plague  home.  But  he  bore  a  charmed  life.  The  smitten 
fell  dead  at  his  feet.  He  went  into  infected  caravansaries 
and  into  pest-houses  whither  physician,  guide,  and  drago- 
man all  revised  to  follow  him.  From  these  fearful  vfsits  he 
returned  with  a  scorching  pain  across  the  temples,  though 
an  hour  of  fresh  air  and  vigorous  exercise  served  to  carry 
it  away.  At  length  his  researches  were  complete.  With 
a  trunk  full  of  papers  —  plans  of  lazarettos,  opinions  of 
celebrated  physicians  living  in   the  Levant,  and  copies  of 


JOHN   HOWARD.  101 

regulations  and  instructions  —  he  prepared  to  return,  and 
wrote  to  inform  his  friends  of  his  intention  to  cross  overland 
to  Vienna.  But  while  his  preparations  for  departure  were 
in  pi-ogress,  the  idea  flashed  across  his  mind  that  all  his 
acquired  knowledge,  various  as  it  was,  had  been  obtained 
from  others  —  was  second-hand,  not  original ;  that  he  had 
seen  not  suffered  the  discipline  of  a  European  Lazaretto ; 
and  that,  possibly,  something  of  material  import  to  the  prac- 
tical working  of  the  scheme  (the  want  of  which  would  be 
felt  as  soon  as  the  system  was  commenced,  if  it  ever 
were  commenced,  in  England)  had  escaped  his  notice.  The 
fear  was  enough.  Altering  his  plan,  he  resolved  to  return ; 
to  find  a  foul  ship,  make  the  voyage  in  her  to  Venice,  and 
there  undergo  the  usual  confinement  of  the  suspected  in  the 
famous  lazaretto  of  that  city.  Such  a  plan  was  full  of  peril. 
A  late  ambassador,  Mr.  Murray,  had  died  of  the  plague  in 
that  very  lazaretto ;  but  nothing  would  deter  him  from  his 
purpose,  and  he  departed.  Plague  broke  out  in  the  ship, 
and  a  strong  man  died  in  a  few  hours ;  yet  he  went  on  to 
Smyrna,  deliberately  sought  out  a  foul  vessel,  took  his  berth 
and  started  for  Venice.  On  the  way  they  were  attacked  by 
pirates,  when  Howard  astonished  the  Venetian  sailors  by 
his  courage  and  by  a  lesson  which  he  gave  them  in  the 
noble  art  of  gunnery.  They  acknowledged  that  the  English 
physician  had  saved  them  from  the  slave  market  of  Tunis 
or  Tripoli.  On  the  sixtieth  day  of  the  voyage  they  arrived 
in  Venice,  and  were  all  transferred  to  the  lazaretto,  where 
Howard's  health  suffered  severely  from  the  confinement, 
though  he  was  supported. with  the  thought  that  he  was  gain- 
ing precious  experience.  His  minute  account  of  the  disci- 
pline of  this  famous  Lazaretto  is  most  interesting.^ 

Howard  came  out  of  his  confinement  reduced  to  a  skele- 
ton, and  flushed  with  fever.     However  anxious  to  get  home 

1  Lazarettos  of  Europe,  pp.  16-22. 
9* 


102  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

(for  a  dreadful  domestic  calamity  had  occurred ;  his  only 
child,  now  a  young  man,  had  lost  his  reason,  and  was  under 
the  charge  of  a  keeper),  he  was  too  weak  to  travel  for  some 
days.  He  went  to  Trieste  and  Vienna,  where  he  held  a 
long  and  exceedingly  curious  interview  with  the  Emperor, 
Joseph  II.,  himself  a  reformer,  or  rather  an  innovator,  dur- 
ing which  the  English  gentleman  told  the  German  ruler 
some  very  unusual  truths.  He  reached  England  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1787,  having  been  absent  on  his  extraordinary  mis- 
sion sixteen  months. 

As  soon  as  his  domestic  concerns  were  put  into  such  order 
as  they  admitted,  and  his  great  work  on  the  Lazarettos  of 
Europe  was  published,  Howard  began  a  fresh  and  final 
review  of  the  prisons  of  the  three  kingdoms.  He  visited  all 
with  care,  and  presented  a  Bible  to  each  of  those  in  the 
county  towns.  Vast  improvements  had  already  taken  place 
in  the  management  and  discipline  of  the  prisons,  in  the 
food,  clothing,  work,  and  Christian  teaching  of  the  prison- 
ers. Foremost  among  the  magistrates  who  adopted  the 
new  system  were  those  of  Manchester.  They  built  on  the 
banks  of  the  Irwell  a  large  prison,  with  an  express  view  to 
carrying  Howard's  ideas  into  effect ;  and  on  the  foundation- 
stone  of  the  edifice  they  set  this  inscription,  —  "  That  there 
may  remain  to  posterity  a  monument  of  the  affection  and 
gratitude  of  this  country  to  that  most  excellent  person,  who 
has  so  fully  proved  the  wisdom  and  humanity  of  the  sepa- 
rate and  solitary  confinement  of  offenders,  this  prison  is 
inscribed  with  the  name  of  John  Howaku."  This  final 
tour  of  the  English  jails  occupied  bini  for  eighteen  months  ; 
and  the  results  of  his  inspection  were  recorded  in  a  new 
edition  of  his  State  of  Prisons. 

"While  in  the  Levant  he  had  enjoyed  many  opportunities 
of  hearing  the  opinions  of  merchants  and  consular  agents 
on  the  prospects  of  our  trade  with  the  East.  It  was  said, 
that  were  it. 'not  for  fear  of  the  plague,  that  trade  might  be 


JOHN    HOWARD,  103 

at  once  (doubled.  As  we  were  without  quarantine  establish- 
ments, the  people  were  afraid  of  any  ships  from  infected 
districts ;  the  consequence  of  which  fear  was,  that  the 
Dutch  ran  away  with  the  traffic,  without  taking  sufficient 
care  about  the  plague.  So  we  lost  the  profits  without 
escaping  the  risks,  as  the  Dutch  ships  might  as  easily  intro- 
duce the  pest  at  second-hand  as  our  own  at  first.  This  idea 
settled  in  Howard's  mind,  and  helped  to  shape  towards  a 
more  practical  end  those  purposes  which  he  pursued  from 
purer  and  more  romantic  motives.  In  the  postscript  to  his 
new  book  on  Lazarettos,  he  told  the  public  of  his  intention 
to  follow  up  the  new  inquiries.  "  To  my  country,"  he  said 
in  a  few  noble  and  simple  words,  the  last  he  addressed  to  it 
in  print,  "  I  commit  the  result  of  my  past  labors.  It  is  my 
intention  again  to  quit  it  for  the  purpose  of  revisiting  Rus- 
sia, Turkey,  and  some  other  countries,  and  extending  my 
tour  into  the  East.  I  am  not  insensible  of  the  dangers  Ihat 
must  attend  such  a  journey.  Should  it  please  God  to  cut 
off  my  life  in  the  prosecution  of  this  design,  let  not  my 
conduct  be  imputed  to  rashness  or  enthusiasm,  but  to  a  seri- 
ous conviction  that  I  am  pursuing  the  path  of  duty."  These 
words  were  prophetic. 

From  London  he  went  to  Riga,  thence  to  St.  Petersburg 
and  Moscow,  from  which  place  he  proposed  to  travel  to 
Warsaw,  and  through  Vienna  to  Constantinople.  But  the 
war  overruled  his  plans.  Russia  and  Turkey  were  strug- 
gling fiercely  on  the  Dneiper  and  the  Pruth.  Bender  had 
just  fallen,  and  the  Muscovites  were  hurrying  their  forces 
to  the  south.  Sad  as  had  been  his  experiences,  Howard  had 
seen  nothing  to  compare  in  atrocity  with  the  reckless  waste 
of  life  in  time  of  war.  The  roads  were  almost  choked  with 
dead  bodies.  Raw  recruits,  most  of  them  too  young  to 
bear  privation,  were  hurled  by  forced  marches,  and  at  every 
sacrifice,  towards  the  theatre  of  war.  They  dropped,  and 
were  left  to  die.     Hunger,  hardship,  fever,   thinned  their 


104  NEW    BIOGUAPHIES. 

ranks  as  they  staggered  on  towards  the  Black  Sea.  How- 
ard had  no  sympathy  with  military  glo)y  ;  and  the  sicken- 
ing sights  which  he  witnessed  on  the  roads  from  Moscow  to 
Kherson,  disgusted  him  with  the  hypocrisy  of  Russia's  boast 
of  having  become  a  civilized  power.  Even  the  great  ques- 
tion of  the  plague  was  laid  aside  for  a  while,  in  presence  of 
all  these  horrors  to  be  brought  to  light,  all  these  miseries  !o 
be  assuaged.  In  his  portmanteau  he  had  carried  out,  for 
the  use  of  his  expected  plague  patients,  a  quantity  of  James's 
powders,  a  medicine  believed  to  possess  all  save  miraculous 
powers;  and  he  thought  he  should  do  wisely  in  placing 
these  powders  at  the  service  of  the  poor  Russian  serfs  who 
were  falling  in  crowds  around  him,  the  victims  of  an  in- 
fernal military  system.  So  he  went  down  to  the  coasts  of 
the  Black  Sea,  visited  the  hospitals  of  Crement-schouk, 
Otschakow,  St.  Nicholas,  Kherson,  and  other  places.  Ilis 
letters  and  his  notes  in  his  journal  are  heart-rending.  "  They 
are  dreadfully  neglected.  A  heart  of  stone  would  almost 
bleed !  The  abuses  of  office  are  glaring,  and  I  want  not 
courage  to  tell  them  so."  Russian  officials,  with  the  cunning 
of  an  Asiatic  race,  so  soon  as  they  saw  that  Howard  would 
expose  their  cruelties,  and  disabuse  the  western  public  of  its 
false  estimate  of  Russian  civilization,  an  estimate  drawn 
from  the  splendid  misrepresentations  of  Voltaire  and  those 
French  theorists  who  were  willing  to  depose  Providence  in 
favor  of  the  Czars  —  began  to  throw  dust  in  his  eyes. 
They  prepared  the  hospitals  for  his  reception,  removed  the 
more  unsightly  objects,  pretended  that  he  had  inspected  all 
where  he  had  seen  only  a  few  prepared  wards ;  but  his  ex- 
perience defeated  these  attempts  at  imposition,  and  his  con- 
ductor gained  nothing  save  the  dishonor  attaching  to  a  mean 
trick.  Whoever  wishes  to  see  the  military  system  of  Rus- 
sia in  its  true  character,  as  conducted  in  the  villages  and 
cities  of  the  Muscovite  empire,  must  study  the  memorials  of 
Howard's  last  visit  to  Russia. 


JOHN    HOWARD. 


105 


He  died  in  the  midst  of  his  labors.  He  caught  the  camp 
fever  at  Kherson,  from  a  young  lady  whom  he  attended  as  a 
physician,  and  died  in  that  city  on  the  morning  of  January 
20,  1790,  and  was  buried  on  the  road  to  St.  Nicholas. 


JOHN    BUNYAN. 


John  Buntan,  the  most  popular  religious  writer  in 
the  English  language,  was  born  at  Elstow,  about  a  mile 
from  Bedford,  in  the  year  1628.  He  may  be  said  to  have 
been  bom  a  tinker.  The  tinkers  then  formed  a  hereditary 
caste,  which  was  held  in  no  high  estimation.  They  were 
generally  vagrants  and  pilferers,  and  were  often  confounded 
with  the  gipsies,  whom  in  truth  they  nearly  resembled. 
Bunyan's  father  was  more  respectable  than  most  of  the 
tribe.  He  had  a  fixed  residence  and  was  able  to  send  his 
son  to  a  village  school  where  reading  and  writing  were 
taught. 

The  years  of  John's  boyhood  were  those  during  which  the 
puritan  spirit  was  in  the  highest  vigor  all  over  England ; 
and  nowhere  had  that  spirit  more  influence  than  in  Bedford- 
shire. It  is  not  wonderful,  therefore,  that  a  lad  to  whom 
nature  had  giten  a  powerful  imagination  and  sensibility 
which  amounted  to  a  disease,  should  have  been  early  haunted 
by  religious  terrors.  Before  he  was  ten  his  sports  were 
interrupted  by  fits  of  remorse  and  despair;  and  his  sleep 
was  disturbed  by  dreams  of  fiends  trying  to  fly  away  with 
him.  As  he  grew  older,  his  mental  conflicts  become  still 
more  violent.  The  strong  language  in  which  he  described 
them  has  strangely  misled  all  his  biographers  except  Mr. 
Southey.     It  has  long  been  an  ordinary  practice  with  pious 

(106) 


JOHN   BUNTAN.  107 

writers  to  cite  Bunyan  as  an  instance  of  the  supernatural 
power  of  divine  grace  to  rescue  the  human  soul  from  the 
lowest  depths  of  wickedness.  He  is  called  in  one  book  the 
most  notorious  of  profligates ;  in  another,  the  brand  plucked 
from  the  burning.  He  is  designated  in  Mr.  Ivimey's  His- 
tory of  the  Baptists  as  the  depraved  Bunyan,  the  wicked 
tinker  of  Elstow.  Mr.  Ryland,  a  man  once  of  great  note 
among  the  Dissenters,  breaks  out  into  the  following  rhap- 
sody :  "  No  man  of  common  sense  and  common  integrity 
can  deny  that  Bunyan  was  a  practical  atheist,  a  worthless 
contemptible  infidel,  a  vile  rebel  to  God  and  goodness,  a 
common  profligate,  a  soul-despising,  a  soul-murdering,  a  soul- 
damning,  thoughtless  wretch  as  could  exist  on  the  face  of 
the  earth.  Now  be  astonished,  O  heavens,  to  eternity  !  and 
wonder,  O  earth  and  hell !  while  time  endures.  Behold 
this  very  man  become  a  miracle  of  mercy,  a  mirror  of 
wisdom,  goodness,  holiness,  truth,  and  love."  But  whoever 
takes  the  trouble  to  examine  the  evidence  will  find  that  the 
good  men  who  wrote  this  had  been  deceived  by  a  phrase- 
ology which,  as  they  had  been  hearing  it  and  using  it  all 
their  lives,  they  ought  to  have  understood  better.  There 
cannot  be  a  greater  mistake  than  to  infer  from  the  strong 
.expressions  in  which  a  devout  man  bemoans  his  exceeding 
sinfulness,  that  he  had  led  a  worse  life  than  his  neighbors. 
Many  excellent  persons,  whose  moral  character  from  boy- 
hood to  old  age  has  been  free  from  any  stain  discernible  to 
their  fellow-creatures,  have,  in  their  autobiographies  and 
diaries,  applied  to  themselves,  and  doubtless  with  sincerity, 
epithets  as  severe  as  could  be  applied  to  Titus  Gates  or  Mrs. 
Brownrigg.  It  is  quite  certain  that  Bunyan  was,  at  eighteen, 
what,  in  any  but  the  most  austerely  puritanical  circles,  would 
have  been  considered  as  a  young  man  of  singular  gravity  and 
innocence.  Indeed,  it  may  be  remarked  that  he,  like  many 
other  penitents  who,  in  general  terms,  acknowledged  them- 
selves  to   have  been  the  worst  of  mankind,  fired    up   and 


108  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

Stood  vigorously  on  his  defence,  wlienever  any  particular 
charge  was  brought  against  him  by  others.  He  declares, 
it  is  true,  that  he  had  let  loose  the  reins  on  the  neck  of 
his  lusts,  that  he  had  delighted  in  all  transgressions  against 
the  divine  law,  and  that  he  had  been  the  ringleader  of  the 
youth  of  Elsfow  in  all  manner  of  vice.  But  when  those 
who  wished  him  ill  accused  him  of  licentious  amours,  he  called 
on  God  and  the  angels  to  attest  his  purity.  No  woman, 
he  said,  in  heaven,  earth,  or  hell,  could  charge  him  with  hav- 
ing ever  made  any  improper  advances  to  her.  Not  only 
had  he  been  sti-ictly  faithful  to  his  wife  ;  but  he  had,  even 
before  his  marriage,  been  perfectly  spotless.  It  does  not 
appear  from  his  own  confessions,  or  from  the  railings  of  his 
enemies,  that  he  ever  was  drunk  in  his  life.  One  bad  habit 
he  contracted,  that  of  using  profane  language ;  but  he  tells 
us  that  a  single  reproof  cured  him  so  effectually  that  he 
never  offended  again.  The  worst  that  can  be  laid  to  the 
charge  of  this  poor  youth,  whom  it  has  been  the  fashion  to 
represent  as  the  most  desperate  of  reprobates,  as  a  village 
Rochester,  is  that  he  had  a  great  liking  for  some  diversions, 
quite  harmless  in  themselves,  but  condemned  by  the  rigid 
precisians  among  whom  he  lived,  and  for  whose  opinion  he 
had  a  great  respect.  The  four  chief  sins  of  which  he  was. 
guilty  were  dancing,  ringing  the  bells  of  the  parish  church, 
playing  at  tipcat,  and  reading  the  History  of  Sir  Bevis  of 
Southampton.  A  Rector  of  the  school  of  Laud  would  have 
held  such  a  young  man  up  to  the  whole  paiush  as  a  model. 
But  Bunyan's  notions  of  good  and  evil  had  been  learned  in 
a  very  different  school ;  and  he  was  made  miserable  by  the 
conflict  between  his  tastes  and  his  scruples. 

When  he  was  about  seventeen,  the  ordinary  course  of  his 
life  was  interrupted  by  an  event  which  gave  a  lasting  color 
to  his  thoughts.  He  enlisted  in  the  parliamentary  army, 
and  served  during  the  decisive  campaign  of  1 645.  All  that 
we  know  of  his  military  career  is  that,  at  the  siege  of  Leices- 


JOUN   BUNYAN.  109 

ter,  one  of  his  comrades,  who  had  taken  his  post,  was  killed 
by  a  shot  from  the  town.  Bunyan  ever  after  considered 
himself  as  having  been  saved  from  death  by  the  special 
interference  of  Providence.  It  may  be  observed  that  his 
imagination  was  strongly  impressed  by  the  glimpse  which  he 
had  caught  of  the  pomp  of  war.  To  the  last  he  loved  to 
draw  his  illustrations  of  sacred  things  from  camps  and  for- 
tresses, from  guns,  drums,  trumpets,  flags  of  truce,  and  regi- 
ments arrayed,  each  under  its  own  banner.  His  Great  Heart, 
his  Captain  Boanerges,  and  his  Captain  Credence,  are  evi- 
dently portraits,  of  which  the  originals  were  among  those 
martial  saints  who  fought  and  expounded  in  Fairfax's  army. 
In  a  few  months  Bunyan  returned  home,  and  married. 
His  wife  had  some  pious  relations,  and  brought  him  as  her 
only  portion,  some  pious  books.  And  now  his  mind,  excit- 
able by  nature,  very  imperfectly  disciplined  by  education, 
and  exposed,  without  any  protection,  to  the  infectious  viru- 
lence of  the  enthusiasm  which  was  then  epidemic  in  Eng- 
land, began  to  be  fearfully  disordered.  In  outward  things 
he  soon  became  a  strict  Pharisee.  He  was  constant  in 
attendance  at  prayers  and  sermons.  His  favorite  amuse- 
ments were,  one  after  another,  relinquished,  though  not 
without  many  painful  struggles,  iflthe  middle  of  a  game 
of  tipcat  he  paused,  and  stood  staring  wildly  upwards  with 
his  stick  in  his  hand.  He  had  heard  a  voice  asking  him 
whether  he  would  leave  his  sins  and  go  to  heaven,  or  keep 
his  sins  and  go  to  hell ;  and  he  had  seen  an  awful  counte- 
nance frowning  on  him  from  the  sky.  The  odious  vice  of 
bell-ringing  he  renounced  ;  but  he  still  for  a  time  ventured  to 
go  to  the  church-tower  and  look  on  while  others  pulled  the 
ropes.  But  soon  the  thought  struck  him  that,  if  he  per- 
sisted in  such  wickedness,  the  steeple  would  fall  on  his  head  ; 
and  he  tied  in  terror  from  the  accursed  place.  To  give  up 
dancing  on  the  village  green  was  still  harder;  and  some 
months  elapsed  before  he  had  the  fortitude  to  part  with  this 
10 


110  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

darling  sin.  When  this  last  sacrifice  had  been  made,  he 
was,  even  when  tried  by  the  maxims  of  that  austere  time, 
faultless.  All  Elstow  talked  of  him  as  an  eminently  pious 
youth.  But  his  own  mind  was  more  unquiet  than  ever. 
Having  nothing  more  to  do  in  the  way  of  visible  reforma- 
tion, yet  finding  in  religion  no  pleasures  to  supply  the  place 
of  the  juvenile  amusements  which  he  had  relinquished,  he 
began  to  apprehend  that  he  lay  under  some  special  maledic- 
tion ;  and  he  was  tormented  by  a  succession  of  fantasies 
which  seemed  likely  to  drive  him  to  suicide  or  to  Bedlam. 

At  one  time  he  took  it  into  his  head  that  all  persons  of 
Israelite  blood  would  be  saved,  and  tried  to  make  out  that 
he  partook  of  that  blood ;  but  his  hopes  were  speedily 
destroyed  by  his  father,  who  seems  to  have  had  no  ambition 
to  be  regarded  as  a  Jew. 

At  another  time  Bunyan  was  disturbed  by  a  strange 
dilemma :  "  If  I  have  not  faith,  I  am  lost ;  if  I  have  faith, 
I  can  work  miracles."  He  was  tempted  to  cry  to  the  pud- 
dles between  Elstow  and  Bedford,  "  Be  ye  dry,"  and  to  stake 
his  eternal  hopes  on  the  event. 

Then  he  took  up  a  notion  that  the  day  of  grace  for  Bed- 
ford and  the  neighboring  villages  was  passed ;  that  all  who 
were  to  be  saved  in  thaPpart  of  England  were  already  con- 
verted ;  and  that  he  had  begun  to  pray  and  strive  some 
months  too  late. 

Then  he  was  harassed  by  doubts  whether  the  Turks 
were  not  in  the  right,  and  the  Christians  in  the  wrong.  Then 
he  was  troubled  by  a  maniacal  impulse  which  prompted  him 
to  pray  to  the  trees,  to  a  broomstick,  to  the  parish  bull.  As 
yet,  however,  he  was  only  entering  the  valley  of  the  Shadow 
of  Death.  Soon  the  darkness  grew  thicker.  Hideous  forms 
floated  before  him.  Sounds  of  cursing  and  wailing  were  in 
his  ears.  His  way  ran  through  stench  and  fire,  close  to  the 
mouth  of  the  bottomless  pit.  He  began  to  be  haunted  by 
a  strange  curiosity  about  the  unpardonable  sin,  and  by  a 


JOHN    BUNYAN.  Ill 

morbid  longing  to  commit  it.  But  the  most  frightful  of  all 
the  forms  which  his  disease  took  was  a  propensity  to  utter 
blasphemy,  and  especially  to  ^enounce  his'  share  in  the 
benefits  of  the  redemption.  Night  and  day,  in  bed,  at  table, 
at  work,  evil  spirits,  as  he  imagined,  were  repeating  close 
to  his  ear  the  words,  "  Sell  him,  sell  him."  He  struck  at 
the  hobgoblins;  he  pushed  them  from  him;  but  still  they 
■were  ever  at  his  side.  He  cried  out  in  answer  to  them, 
hour  after  hour,  "  Never,  never ;  not  for  thousands  of 
worlds ;  not  for  thousands."  At  length,  worn  out  by  this 
long  agony,  he  suffered  the  fatal  words  to  escape  him,  "  Let 
him  go,  if  he  will."  Then  his  misery  became  more  fearful 
than  ever.  He  had  done  what  could  not  be  forgiven.  He 
bad  forfeited  his  part  of  the  great  sacrifice.  Like  Esau,  he 
bad  sold  his  birthright ;  and  there  was  no  longer  any  place 
for  repentance.  "  None,"  he  afterwards  wrote,  "  knows  the 
terrors  of  those  days  but  myself."  He  has  described  his 
sufferings  with  singular  energy,  simplicity,  and  pathos.  He 
envied  the  brutes,  he  envied  the  very  stones  in  the  streets, 
and  the  tiles  on  the  houses.  The  sun  seemed  to  withhold 
its  light  and  warmth  from  him.  His  body,  though  cast  in  a 
sturdy  mould,  and  though  still  in  the  highest  vigor  of  youth, 
trembled  whole  days  together  witb  the  fear  of  death  and 
judgment.  He  fancied  that  this  trembling  was  the  sign  set 
on  the  worst  reprobates,  the  sign  which  God  had  put  on 
Cain.  ■  The  unhappy  man's  emotion  destroyed  his  power  of 
digestion.  He  had  such  pains  that  he  expected  to  burst 
asunder  like  Judas,  whom  he  regarded  as  his  prototype. 

Neither  the  books  which  Bunyan  read,  nor  the  advisers 
whom  he  consulted,  were  likely  to  do  much  good  in  a  case 
like  his.  His  small  library  had  received  a  most  unseasona- 
ble addition,  the  account  of  the  lamentable  end  of  Francis 
Spira.  One  ancient  man  of  high  repute  for  piety,  whom 
the  sufferer  consulted,  gave  an  opinion  which  might  well 
have  produced  fatal  consequences.      "  I  am    afraid,"    said 


112  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

Bunyan,  "  that  I  have  committed  the  sin  against  the  Holy 
Ghost."  "  Indeed,"  said  the  old  fanatic,  "  I  am  afraid  tliat 
you  have."  « 

At  length  the  clouds  broke  ;  the  light  became  clearer  and 
clearer ;  and  the  enthusiast,  who  had  imagined  that  he  was 
branded  Avith  the  mai-k  of  the  first  murderer,  and  destined 
to  the  end  of  the  arch  traitor,  enjoyed  peace  and  a  cheerful 
confidence  in  the  mercy  of  God.  Years  elapsed,  however, 
before  his  nerves,  which  had  been  so  perilously  overstrained, 
recovered  their  tone.  When  he  had  joined  a  Baptist  society 
at  Bedford,  and  was  for  the  first  time  admitted  to  partake 
of  the  Euchai'ist,  it  was  with  difficulty  that  he  could  refrain 
from  imprecating  destruction  on  his  brethren  while  the  cup 
was  passing  from  hand  to  hand.  After  he  had  been  some 
time  a  member  of  the  congregation,  he  began  to  preach-; 
and  his  sermons  produced  a  powerful  effect.  He  was  indeed 
illiterate ;  but  he  spoke  to  illiterate  men.  The  severe  train- 
ing through  which  he  had  passed  had  given  him  such  an 
experimental  knowledge  of  all  the  modes  of  religious  mel- 
ancholy as  he  could  never  have  gathered  from  books ;  and 
his  vigorous  genius,  animated  by  a  fervent  spirit  of  devotion, 
enabled  him  not  only  to  exercise  a  gi'cat  influence  over  the 
vulgar,  but  even  to  extort  the  half  contemptuous  admiration 
of  scholars.  Yet  it  was  long  before  he  ceased  to  be  tor- 
mented by  an  impulse  which  urged  him  to  utter  words  of 
horrible  impiety  in  the  pulpit. 

Counter-irritants  are  of  as  great  use  in  moral  as  in  physi- 
cal diseases.  It  should  seem  that  Bunyan  was  finally 
relieved  from  the  internal  sufferings  which  had  embittered 
his  life  by  sharp  persecution  from  without.  He  had  been 
five  years  a  preacher,  when  the  Restoration  put  it  in  the 
power  of  the  Cavalier  gentlemen  and  clergymen  all  over  the 
country  to  oppress  the  Dissenters ;  and,  of  all  the  Dissent- 
ers whose  history  is  known  to  us,  he  was  perhaps  the  most 
hardly  treated.    In  November,  1660,  he  was  flung  into  Bed- 


JOHN   BUNYAX.  113 

ford  gaol ;  and  there  he  remained,  with  some  intervals  of 
partial  and  precarious  liberty,  during  twelve  years.  His 
persecutors  tried  to  extort  from  him  a  promise  that  he  would 
abstain  from  preaching ;  but  he  was  convinced  that  he  was 
divinely  set  apart  and  commissioned  to  be  a  teacher  of  right- 
eousness, and  he  was  fully  determined  to  obey  God  rather 
than  man.  He  was  brought  before  several  tribunals,  laughed 
at,  caressed,  reviled,  menaced,  but  in,  vain.  He  was  face- 
tiously told  that  he  was  quite  right  in  thinking  that  he  ought 
not  to  hide  his  gift ;  but  that  his  real  gift  was  skill  in  repair- 
ing old  kettles.  He  was  compared  to  Alexander  the  copper- 
smith. He  was  told  that,  if  he  would  give  up  preaching, 
he  should  be  instantly  liberated.  He  was  warned  that,  if  he 
persisted  in  disobeying  the  law,  he  would  be  liable  to  banish- 
ment, and  that,  if  he  were  found  in  England  after  a  certain 
time,  his  neck  would  be  stretched.  His  answer  was,  "  If 
you  let  me  out  to-day,  I  will  preach  again  to-morrow." 
Year  after  year  he  lay  patiently  in  a  dungeon,  compared 
with  which  the  worst  prison  now  to  be  found  in  the  island  is 
a  palace.  His  fortitude  is  the  more  extraordinary,  because 
his  domestic  feelings  were  unusually  strong.  Indeed,  be 
was  considered  by  his  stern  brethren  as  somewhat *too  fond 
and  indulgent  a  parent.  He  had  several  small  children, 
and  among  them  a  daughter  who  was  blind,  and  whom  he 
loved  with  peculiar  tenderness.  He  could  not,  he  said,  bear 
even  to  let  the  wind  blow  on  her ;  and  now  she  must  suffer 
cold  and  hunger ;  she  must  beg ;  she  must  be  beaten  ;  "  yet," 
he  added,  "  I  must,  I  must  do  it."  While  he  lay  in  prison 
he  could  do  nothing  in  the  way  of  his  old  trade  for  the  sup- 
port of  his  family.  He  determined,  therefore,  to  take  up  a 
new  trade.  He  learned  to  make  long  tagged  thread  laces  ; 
and  many  thousands  of  these  articles  were  furnished  by  him 
to  the  hawkers.  While  his  hands  were  thus  busied,  he  had 
other  employment  for  his  mind  and  lips.  He  gave  religious 
insti'uction  to  his  fellow-captives ;  and  formed  among  them  a 
10* 


114  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

little  flock,  of  which  he  was  himself  the  pastor.  He  studied 
indefatigably  the  few  books  which  he  possessed.  His  two 
chief  companions  were  the  Bible  and  Fox's  Book  of  Mar- 
tyrs. His  knowledge  of  the  Bible  was  such  that  he  might 
have  been  called  a  living  concordance ;  and  on  the  margin 
of  his  copy  of  the  Book  of  Martyrs  are  still  legible  the 
ill-spelt  lines  of  doggerel  in  which  he  expressed  his  reverence 
for  the  brave  sufferers,  and  his  implacable  enmity  to  the 
mystical  Babylon. 

At  length  he  began  to  write,  and,  though  it  was  some  time 
before  he  discovered  where  his  strength  lay,  his  writings 
were  not  unsuccessful.  They  were  coarse,  indeed,  but  they 
showed  a  keen  mother-wit,  a  great  command  of  the  homely 
mother-tongue,  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  English  Bible, 
and  a  vast  and  dearly  bought  spiritual  experience.  They 
therefore,  when  the  corrector  of  the  press  had  improved  the 
syntax  and  the  spelling,  were  well  received  by  the  humbler 
class  of  Dissenters. 

Much  of  Bunyan's  time  was  spent  in  controversy.  He 
wrote  sharply  against  the  Quakers,  whom  he  seems  always 
to  have  held  in  utter  abhorrence.  It  is,  however,  a  remark- 
able fact,  that  he  adopted  one  of  their  peculiar  fashions  :  his 
practice  was  to  write,  not  November  or  December,  but 
eleventh  month  and  twelfth  month. 

He  wrote  against  the  liturgy  of  the  Church  of  England. 
No  two  things,  according  to  him,  had  less  affinity  than  the 
form  of  prayer  and  the  spirit  of  prayer.  Those,  he  said 
with  much  point,  who  have  most  of  the  spirit  of  prayer,  are 
all  to  be  found  in  gaol ;  and  those  who  have  most  zeal  for 
the  form  of  prayer  are  all  to  be  found  at  the  ale-house. 
The  doctrinal  articles,  on  the  other  hand,  he  warmly  praised, 
and  defended  against  some  Arminian  clergymen  who  had 
signed  them.  The  most  acrimonious  of  all  his  works,  is  his 
answer  to  Edward  Fowler,  afterwards  bishop  of  Gloucester, 
an  excellent  man,  but  not  free  from  the  taint  of  Pelagian- 
ism. 


JOHN    BUNYAN.  115 

Bunyan  had  also  a  dispute  with  some  of  the  chiefs  of  the 
sect  to  which  he  belonged.  He  doubtless  held  with  perfect 
sincerity  the  distinguishing  tenet  of  that  sect,  but  he  did  not 
consider  that  tenet  as  one  of  high  importance ;  and  willingly 
joined  in  communion  with  pious  Presbyterians  and  Inde- 
pendents. The  sterner  Baptists,  therefore,  loudly  pro- 
nounced him  a  false  brother.  A  controversy  arose  which 
long  survived  the  original  combatants.  In  our  own  time 
the  cause  which  Bunyan  had  defended  with  rude  logic  and 
rhetoric  against  Kiflfin  and  Danvers  was  pleaded  by  Robert 
Hall  with  an  ingenuity  and  eloquence  such  as  no  polemical 
writer  has  ever  surpassed. 

During  the  years  which  immediately  followed  the  Res- 
toration, Bunyan's  confinement  seems  to  have  been  strict. 
But  as  the  passions  of  1660  cooled,  as  the  hatred  with 
which  the  Puritans  had  been  regarded  while  their  reign 
was  recent  gave  place  to  pity,  he  was  less  and  less  harshly 
treated.  The  distress  of  his  family,  and  his  own  patience, 
courage,  and  piety,  softened  the  hearts  of  his  persecutors- 
Like  his  own  Christian  in  the  cage,  he  found  protectors 
even  among  the  crowd  of  Vanity  Fair.  The  Bishop  of  the 
diocese,  Dr.  Barlow,  is  said  to  have  interceded  for  him.  At 
length  the  prisoner  was  sujQfered  to  pass  most  of  his  time 
beyond  the  walls  of  the  gaol,  on  condition,  as  it  should 
seem,  that  he  remained  within  the  town  of  Bedford. 

He  owed  his  complete  liberation  to  one  of  the  worst  acts  of 
one  of  the  worst  governments  that  England  has  ever  seen. 
In  1671  the  Cabal  was  in  power.  Charles  II.  had  concluded 
the  treaty  by  which  he  bound  himself  to  set  up  the  Roman 
Catholic  religion  in  England.  The  first  step  which  he  took 
towards  that  end  was  to  annul,  by  an  unconstitutional  exer- 
cise of  his  prerogative,  all  the  penal  statutes  against  the 
Roman  Catholics  ;  and,  in  order  to  disguise  his  real  design, 
he  annulled  at  the  same  time  the  penal  statutes  against 
Protestant  non-conformists.     Bunyan  was  consequently  set 


116^  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

at  large.  In  the  first  warmth  of  his  gratitude  he  publislied 
a  tract  in  which  he  compared  Charles  to  that  humane  and 
generous  Persian  king  who,  though  not  himself  blessed  with 
the  light  of  the  true  religion,  favored  the  chosen  people, 
and  permitted  them,  after  years  of  captivity,  to  rebuild  their 
beloved  temple.  To  candid  men,  who  consider  how  much 
Bunyan  had  suffered,  and  how  little  he  could  guess  the 
secret  design  of  the  court,  the  unsuspicious  thankfulness 
with  which  he  accepted  the  precious  boon  of  fi'eedom  will 
not  appear  to  require  any  apology.  ' 

Before  he  left  his  prison  he  had  begun  the  book  which 
has  made  his  name  immortal.  The  history  of  that  book  is 
remarkable.  The  author  was,  as  he  tells  us,  writing  a  trea- 
tise in  which  he  had  occasion  to  speak  of  the  stages  of  the 
Christian  progress.  He  compared  that  progress,  as  many 
others  had  compared  it,  to  a  pilgrimage.  Soon  his  quick 
wit  discovered  innumerable  points  of  similarity  which  had 
escaped  his  predecessors.  Images  came  crowding  on  his 
mind  faster  than  he  could  put  them  into  words,  quagmires 
and  pits,  steep  hills,  dark  and  horrible  glens,  soft  vales, 
sunny  pastures,  a  gloomy  castle  of  which  the  couit-yard 
was  strewn  with  the  skulls  and  bones  of  murdered  prison- 
ers, a  town  all  bustle  and  splendor,  like  London  on  the 
Lord  Mayor's  Day,  and  the  narrow  path,  straight  as  a  rule 
could  make  it,  running  on  up  hill  and  down  hill,  through 
city  and  through  wilderness,  to  the  Black  River  and  Shin- 
ing Gate.  He  had  found  out,  as  most  people  would  have 
said,  by  accident,  as  he  would  doubtless  have  said,  by  the 
guidance  of  Providence,  where  his  powers  lay.  He  had  no 
suspicion,  indeed,  that  he  was  producing  a  masterpiece. 
He  could  not  guess  what  place  his  allegory  would  occupy 
in  Enghsh  literature  ;  for  of  Enghsh  literature  he  knew 
nothing.  Those  who  suppose  him  to  have  studied  the 
Fairy  Queen  might  easily  be  confuted,  if  this  were  the 
proper  place  for  a  detailed  estimation  of  the  passages  in 


JOHN    BUNYAJf.  117 

which  the  two  allegories  have  been  thought  to  resemble 
each  other.  The  only  work  of  fiction,  in  all  probability, 
with  which  he  could  compare  his  Pilgrim,  was  his  old  favor- 
ite, the  legend  of  Sir  Bevis  of  Southampton.  He  would 
have  thought  it  a  sin  to  borrow  any  time  from  the  serious 
business  of  his  life,  from  his  expositions,  his  controversies, 
and  his  lace  tags,  for  the  purpose  of  amusing  himself  with 
what  he  considered  a  mere  trifle.  It  was  only,  he  assures 
us,  at  spare  moments  that  he  returned  to  the  House  Beauti- 
ful, the  Delectable  Mountains,  and  the  Enchanted  Ground. 
He  had  no  assistance.  Nobody  but  himself  saw  a  line  till 
the  whole  was  complete.  He  then  consulted  his  pious 
friends.  Some  were  pleased,  others  were  much  scandal- 
ized. It  was  a  vain  story,  a  mere  romance,  about  giants, 
and  lions,  and  goblins,  and  warriors,  sometimes  fighting 
with  monsters,  and  sometimes  regaled  by  fair  ladies  in 
stately  palaces.  The  loose  atheistical  wits  of  Will's  might 
write  such  stuff  to  divert  the  painted  Jezebels  of  the  court ! 
but  did  it  become  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  to  copy  the  evil 
fashions  of  the  world  ?  There  had  been  a  time  when  the 
cant  of  such  fools  would  have  made  Bunyan  miserable. 
But  that  time  was  passed  ;  and  his  mind  was  now  in  a  firm 
and  healthy  state.  He  saw  that,  in  employing  fiction  to 
make  truth  clear  and  goodness  attractive,  he  was  only  fol- 
lowing the  example  which  every  Christian  ought  to  propose 
to  himself;  and  he  determined  to  print. 

The  Pilgrim's  Progress  stole  silently  into  the  world.  Not 
a  single  copy  of  the  first  edition  is  known  to  be  in  exist- 
ence. The  year  of  publication  has  not  been  ascertained. 
It  is  probable  that,  during  some  months,  the  little  volume 
circulated  only  among  poor  and  obscure  sectaries.  But 
soon  the  irresistible  charm  of  a  book  which  gratified  the 
imagination  of  the  reader,  with  all  the  action  and  scenery 
of  a  fairy  tale,  which  exercised  his  ingenuity  by  setting  him 
to  discover  a  multitude  of  curious  analogies,  which  inter- 


118  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

ested  his  feelings  for  human  beings,  frail  like  himself,  and 
struggling  with  temptations  from  within  and  from  without, 
which  every  moment  drew  a  smile  from  him  by  some  stroke 
of  quaint  yet  simple  pleasantry,  and  nevertheless  left  on  his 
mind  a  sentiment  of  reverence  for  God  and  of  sympathy 
for  man,  began  to  produce  its  effect.  In  puritanical  circles, 
from  which  plays  and  novels  were  strictly  excluded,  that 
effect  was  such  as  no  work  of  genius,  though  it  were  supe- 
rior to  the  Iliad,  to  Don  Quixote,  or  to  Othello,  can  ever 
produce  on  a  mind  accustomed  to  indulge  in  literary  luxury. 
In  1678  came  forth  a  second  edition  with  additions;  and 
then  the  demand  became  immense.  In  the  four  following 
years  the  book  was  reprinted  six  times.  The  eighth  edi- 
tion, which  contains  the  last  improvements  made  by  the 
author,  was  published  in  1682,  the  ninth  in  1684,  the  tenth 
in  1685.  The  help  of  the  engraver  had  early  been  called 
in ;  and  tens  of  thousands  of  children  looked  with  terror 
and  delight  on  execrable  copperplates,  which  represented 
Christian  thrusting  his  sword  into  Apollyon,  or  writhing  in 
the  grasp  of  Giant  Despair.  In  Scotland,  and  in  some  of 
the  colonies,  the  Pilgrim  was  even  more  popular  than  in  his 
native  country.  Bunyan  has  told  us,  with  very  pardonable 
vanity,  that  in  New  England  his  dream  was  the  daily  sub- 
ject of  the  conversation  of  thousands,  and  was  thought 
worthy  to  appear  in  the  most  superb  binding.  He  had 
numerous  admirers  in  Holland,  and  among  the  Huguenots 
of  France.  With  the  pleasures,  however,  he  experienced 
some  of  the  pains  of  eminence*  Knavish  booksellers  put 
forth  volumes  of  trash  under  his  name,  and  envious  scrib- 
blers maintained  it  to  be  impossible  that  the  poor  ignorant 
tinker  should  really  be  the  author  of  the  book  which  was 
called  his. 

He  took  the  best  way  to  confound  both  those  who  counter- 
feited him  and  those  who  slandered  him.  He  continued  to 
work  the  Gold-field  which   he  had  discovered,  and  to  draw 


JOHN   BUNYAN.  119 

from  it  new  treasures,  not  indeed  with  quite  such  ease  and 
in  quite  such  abundance  as  when  the  precious  soil  was  still 
virgin,  but  yet  with  success  which  left  all  competition  far 
behind.  In  1684  appeared  the  second  part  of  the  Pilgrim'' s 
Progress.  It  was  soon  followed  by  the  Holy  War,  which,  if 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress  did  not  exist,  would  be  the  best  alle- 
gory that  ever  was  written. 

Bunyan's  place  in  society  Avas  now  very  different  from 
what  it  had  been.  There  had  been  a  time  when  many  Dis- 
senting ministers,  who  could  talk  Latin  and  read  Greek,  had 
affected  to  treat  him  with  scorn.  But  his  fame  and  influence 
now  far  exceeded  theirs.  He  had  so  great  an  authority 
among  the  Baptists  that  he  was  popularly  called  Bishop 
Bunyan.  His  episcopal  visitations  were  annual.  From 
Bedford  he  rode  every  year  to  London,  and  preached  there 
to  large  and  attentive  congregations.  From  London  he 
went  his  circuit  through  the  country,  animating  the  zeal  of 
his  brethren,  collecting  and  distributing  alms,  and  making  up 
quarrels.  The  magistrates  seem  in  general  to  have  given 
him  little  trouble.  But  there  is  reason  to  believe  that,  in 
the  year  1685,  he  was  in  some  danger  of  again  occupying 
his  old  quarters  in  Bedford  gaol.  In  that  year  the  rash  and 
wicked  enterprise  of  Monmouth  gave  the  government  a  pre- 
text for  prosecuting  the  non-conformists ;  and  scarcely  one 
eminent  divine  of  the  Presbyterian,  Independent,  or  Baptist 
persuasion  remained  unmolested.  Baxter  was  in  prison ; 
Howe  was  driven  into  exile;  Henry  was  arrested.  Two 
eminent  Baptists,  with  whom  Bunyan  had  been  engaged  in 
controversy,  were  in  great  peril  and  distress.  Danvers  was 
in  danger  of  being  hanged  ;  and  -Kiffin's  grandsons  were 
actually  hanged.  The  tradition  is  that,  during  those  evil 
days,  Bunyan  was  forced  to  disguise  himself  as  a  wagoner, 
and  that  he  preached  to  his  congregation  at  Bedford  in  a 
smockfrock,  with  a  cart  whip  in  his  hand.  But  soon  a 
great  change  took  place.     James  the  Second  was  at  open 


120  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

war  with  the  church,  and  found  it  necessary  to  court  the 
Dissenters.  Some  of  the  creatures  of  the  government  tried 
to  secure  the  aid  of  Bunyan.  They  probably  knew  that  he 
had  written  in  praise  of  the  indulgence  of  1672,  and  there- 
fore hoped  he  might  be  equally  pleased  with  the  indulgence 
of  1687.  But  fifteen  years  of  thought,  observation,  and 
commerce  with  the  world  had  made  him  wiser.  Nor  were 
the  cases  exactly  parallel.  Charles  was  a  professed  Prot- 
estant: James  was  a  professed  Papist.  The  object  of 
Charles's  indulgence  was  disguised ;  the  object  of  James's  in- 
dulgence was  patent.  Bunyan  was  not  deceived.  He  ex- 
horted his  hearers  to  prepare  themselves  by  fasting  and 
prayer  for  the  danger  which  menaced  their  civil  and  reHg- 
ious  liberties,  and  refused  even  to  speak  to  the  courtier  who 
came  down  to  remodel  the  corporation  of  Bedford,  and  who, 
as  was  supposed,  had  it  in  charge  to  offer  sorpe  municipal 
dignity  to  the  Bishop  of  the  Baptists. 

Bunyan  did  not  live  to  see  the  Revolution.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1688,  he  undertook  to  plead  the  cause  of  a  son  with 
an  angry  father,  and  at  length  prevailed  on  the  old  man  not 
to  disinherit  the  young  one.  This  good  work  cost  the  be- 
nevolent intercessor  his  life.  He  had  to  ride  through  heavy 
rain.  He  came  drenched  to  his  lodgings  on  Snow  Hill,  was 
seized  with  a  violent  fever,  and  died  in  a  few  days.  He  was 
buried  in  Bunhill  Fields ;  and  the  spot  where  he  lies  is  still 
regarded  by  the  non-conformists  with  a  feeling  which  seems 
scarcely  in  harmony  with  the  stern  spirit  of  their  theology. 
Many  puritans  to  whom  the  respect  paid  by  Roman  Catho- 
lics to  the  reliques  and  tombs  of  saints  seemed  childish  or 
sinful,  are  said  to  have  begged  with  their  dying  breath  that 
their  coffins  might  be  placed  as  near  as  possible  to  the  coffin 
of  the  author  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress. 

The  fame  of  Bunyan  during  his  life,  and  during  the  cen- 
tury which  followed  his  death,  was  indeed  great,  but  was 
almpst  entirely  confined  lo  religious  families  of  the  middle 


JOHN    BUNTAN.  121 

and  lower  classes.  Very  seldom  was  he  during  that  time 
mentioned  with  respect  by  any  writer  of  great  literary  emi- 
nence. Young  coupled  his  prose  with  the  poetry  of  the 
wretched  D'Urfey.  In  the  Spiritual  Quixote,  the  adven- 
tures of  Christian  are  ranked  with  those  of  Jack  the  Giant- 
Killer  or  John  Hickathrift.  Cowper  ventured  to  praise  the 
great  allegorist,  but  did  not  venture  to  name  him.  It  is  a 
significant  circumstance  that,  till  a  recent  period,  all  the  nu- 
merous editions  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  were  evidently 
meant  for  the  cottage  and  the  servant's  hall.  The  paper, 
the  printing,  the  plates,  were  all  of  the  meanest  description. 
In  general,  when  the  educated  minority  and  the  common 
people  differ  about  the  merit  of  a  book,  the  opinion  of  the 
educated  minority  finally  prevails.  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  is 
perhaps  the  only  book  about  which,  after  the  lapse  of  a 
hundred  years,  the  educated  minority  has  come  over  to  the 
opinion  of  the  common  people. 

The  attempts  which  have  been  made  to  improve  and  to  im- 
itate this  book  are  not  to  be  numbered.  It  has  been  done  into 
verse ;  it  has  been  done  into  modern  English.  The  Pilgrimage 
of  Tender  Conscience,  the  Pilgrimage  of  Good  Intent,  the 
Pilgrimage  of  Seek  Truth,  the  Pilgrimage  of  Theophilus,  the 
Infant  Pilgrim,  the  Hindoo  Pilgrim,  are  among  the  many 
feeble  copies  of  the  great  original.  But  the  peculiar  glory  of 
Bunyan  is  that  those  who  most  hated  his  doctrines  have  tried 
to  borrow  the  help  of  his  genius.  A  Catholic  version  of  his 
parable  may  be  seen  with  the  head  of  the  Virgin  in  the  title- 
page.  On  the  other  hand,  those  Antinomians  for  whom  his 
Calvinism  is  not  strong  enough,  may  study  the  pilgrimage  of 
Hephsibah,  in  which  nothing  Avill  be  found  which  can  be 
construed  into  an  admission  of  free  agency  and  universal 
redemption.  But  the  most  extraordinary  of  all  the  acts  of 
vandalism  by  which  a  fine  work  of  art  was  ever  defaced, 
was  committed  so  late  as  the  year  1853.  It  was  determined 
to  transform  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  into  a  Tractarian  book. 
U 


122  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

The  task  was  not  easy ;  for  jt  was  necessary  to  make  the  two 
sacraments  the  most  prominent  objects  in  the  allegory ;  and 
of  all  Christian  theologians,  avowed  Quakers  excepted, 
Bunyan  was  the  one  in  whose  system  the  sacraments  held 
the  least  prominent  pliace.  However,  the  "Wicket  Gate  be- 
came a  type  of  baptism,  and  the  House  Beautiful  of  the 
Eucharist.  The  effect  of  this  change  is  such  as  assuredly 
the  ingenious  person  who  made  it  never  contemplated.  For, 
as  not  a  single  pilgrim  passes  through  the  Wicket  Gate  in 
infancy,  and  as  Faithful  hurries  past  the  House  Beautiful 
without  stopping,  the  lesson  which  the  fable  in  its  altered 
shape  teaches,  is  that  none  but  adults  ought  to  be  baptized, 
and  that  the  Eucharist  may  safely  be  neglected.  Nobody 
would  have  discovered  from  the  original  Pilgrim's  Progress 
that  the  author  was  not  a  Paedobaptist.  To  turn  his  book 
into  a  book  against  Paedobaptism  was  an  achievement  re- 
served for  an  Anglo- Catholic  Divine.  Such  blunders  must 
necessarily  be  committed  by  every  man  who  mutilates  parts 
of  a  great  work,  without  taking  a  comprehensive  view  of 
the  whole. 


HORACE. 


QuiNTUS  HoRATius  Flaccus,  the  most  popular,  and 
next  to  Catullus  and  Virgil,  the  greatest  of  the  Roman 
poets,  was  born  VI.  Id.  Dec.  A.  u.  c.  689,  (Dec.  8,  b.  c. 
65),  during  the  consulship  of  L.  Aurelius  Cotta  and  L. 
Manlius  Torquatus,  and  died  November  27,  A.  u.  c.  746, 
(b.  c.  8).  Horace  is  his  own  biographer.  All  the  mate- 
rial facts  of  his  personal  history  are  to  be  gathered  from  the 
allusions  scattered  throughout  his  poems.  A  memoir  attrib- 
uted to  Suetonius,  of  somewhat  doubtful  authority,  furnishes 
a  few  additional  details,  but  none  of  material  moment,  either 
as  to  his  character  or  career.  His  father  was  a  freedman,* 
and  it  was  long  considered  that  he  had  been  a  slave  of  some 
member  of  the  great  family  of  the  Horatii,  whose  name  he 
had  assumed,  in  accordance  with  the  common  usage  in  such 
cases.  But  this  theory  has  latterly  given  place  to  the  sug- 
gestion, based  upon  inscriptions,  that  he  was  a  freedraan  of 
the  town  of  Venusia,  (the  modern  Venosa,)  the  inhabitants 
of  which  belonged  to  the  Horatian  tribe.  ^  The  point  is, 
however,  of  little  importance,  as  the  name,  distinguished  as 

1  Satires,  I.    vi.  6,  46-47. 

^  G.  F.  Grotefend,  Encydopddie  von  Ersch  und  Gruber,  2d  sec.  Vol. 
X.  p.  497,  Leipzig,  1833  ;  and  C.  L.  Grotefend,  Epkemerid.  Literar., 
Darmstadt,  1834,  p.  182;  and  Mommsen's  Inscriptiones  Regni  Nea- 
politini,  LipsisB,  1852. 

(12.3) 


124  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

it  was,  has  derived  more  lustre  from  the  poet  than  from  any 
of  the  patriots  and  heroes  by  whom  it  had  previously  been 
borne.  The  elder  Horace  had  received  his  manumission 
before  his  son  was  born.^  He  had  realized  a  moderate  in- 
dependence in  the  vocation  of  coactor,  a  nanjte  borne  indif- 
ferently by  the  collectors  of  public  revenue,  and  of  money  at 
sales  by  public  auction.  To  which  of  these  classes  he  be- 
longed is  uncertain,  but  most  probably  to  the  latter,^  With  the 
fruits  of  his  industry  he  had  purchased  a  small  property  near 
Venusia,  upon  the  banks  of  the  Aufidus,  the  modern  Ofanto, 
in  the  midst  of  the  Apennines,  upon  the  doubtful  boundai'ies 
of  Lucania  and  Apulia.  Here  the  poet  was  born,  and  in 
this  picturesque  region  of  mountain,  forest,  and  stream,  the 
boy  became  imbued  with  the  love  of  nature,  which  distin- 
guished him  through  life.  The  third  ode  of  the  fourth  book 
affords  a  pleasing  glimpse  of  the  child,  wandering  out  of 
bounds  along  the  slopes  of  Mount  Vultur,  and  being  found 
after  an  anxious  search,  asleep  under  a  covering  of  laurel 
and  myrtle  leaves,  which  the  wild  pigeons  had  spread  to 
shield  this  special  favorite  of  the  gods  from  the  snakes  and 
wild  animals.  The  augury  of  the  future  poet,  said  to  have 
been  drawn  from  the  incident  at  the  time,  was  no  doubt  an 
after-thought  of  the  poet's  own,  but  the  picture  which  the 
lines  present  of  the  strayed  child  asleep,  with  his  hands  full 
of  spring  flowers  is  welcome,  whatever  may  be  thought  of 
the  omen.  In  his  father's  house,  and  in  those  of  the  Apulian 
peasantry  around  him,  Horace  had  opportunities  of  becom- 
ing familiar  with  the  simple  virtues  of  the  poor,  —  their  in- 
dependence, integrity,  chastity,  and  homely  worth,  which  he 
loved  to  contrast  with  the  luxury  and  vice  of  imperial  Rome. 
Of  his  mother  no  mention  occurs,  directly  or  indirectly, 
throughout  his  poems,  and  it  is  reasonable  to  infer  from  this 
circumstance,  taken  in  connection  with  the  indications  which 

1  Satires,  I.  vi.,  8.  2  Satires,  1.  vi.,  86. 


HORACE.  125 

they  present  of  strong  natural  affection,  that  she  died  during 
his  infancy.  He  appears  also  to  have  been  an  only  child. 
No  doubt  he  had  at  an  early  ag6  given  evidence  of  superior 
powers,  and  to  this  it  may  have  been  in  some  measure  owing 
that  his  father  thought  him  worthy  of  a  higher  education  than 
could  be  obtained  under  a  provincial  schoolmaster/  and, 
although  but  ill  able  to  afford  it,  carried  him  to  Rome  when 
about  twelve  years  old,  and  gave  him  the  best  education 
which  the  capital  could  supply.  No  expense  was  spared  to 
save  the  boy  from  any  sense  of  inferiority  among  his  fellow- 
scholars  of  the  highest  ranks.  He  was  waited  on  by  numer- 
ous slaves,  as  though  he  were  the  heir  to  a  considerable  for- 
time.  But  at  the  same  time  he  was  not  allowed  to  enter- 
tain any  shame  for  his  own  5rder,  or  to  aspire  to  a  position 
which  he  was  unequal  to  maintain.  His  father  taught  him 
to  look  forward  to  filling  some  situation  akin  to  that  in  which 
he  had  himself  acquired  a  competency,  and  to  feel  that  in 
any  sphere  culture  and  self-respect  must  command  iufluence, 
and  afford  the  best  guarantee  for  happiness.  Under  the 
stern  tutorage  of  Orbilius  Pupillus,  a  grammarian  of  high 
standing,  richer  in  reputation  than  gold,  whom  the  poet  has 
condeau^|d  to  a  bad  immortality  for  his  flogging  propensi- 
ties, he  learned  grammar,  and  became  familiar  with  the 
earlier  Latin  writers,  and  with  Homer.  He  also  acquired 
such  other  branches  of  instruction  as  were  usually  learned 
by  the  sons  of  Romans  of  the  higher  ranks.  But  what  was 
of  still  more  importance,  during  this  critical  period  of  his 
first  introduction  to  the  seductions  of  the  capital,  he  enjoyed 
the  advantage  of  his  father's  personal  superintendence,  and 
of  a  moral  training,  which  kept  him  aloof,  not  merely  from 
the  indulgence,  but  even  from  the  contact  of  vice.  His  father 
went  with  him  to  all  his  classes,'^  and  being  himself  a  man 
of  shrewd  observation  and  natural  humor,  he  gave  his  son's 

1  Satires,  I.  vi.,  71,  et  seq.  2  Satires,  I.  vi.,  18,  et  seq. 

11* 


126  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

Studies  a  practical  bearing,  by  directing  his  attention  to  the 
follies  and  vices  of  the  luxurious  and  dissolute  society  around 
him,^  and  showing  their  incompatibility  with  the  dictates  of 
reason  and  common  sense.  From  this  admii-able  father, 
Horace  appears  to  have  inherited  that  manly  independence 
for  which  he  was  remarkable,  and  which,  while  assigning  to 
all  ranks  their  due  influence  and  respect,  never  either  over- 
estimates or  compromises  its  own. 

Under  the  homely  exterior  of  the  Apulian  freedman,  we 
see  the  soul  of  the  gentleman.  His  influence  on  his  son  was 
manifestly  great.  In  the  full  maturity  of  his  powers  Horace 
penned  a  tribute  to  his  worth,^  with  a  fervor  manifestly 
prompted  by  the  full  heart  of  a  man  who  had  often  had 
cause  to  feel  the  blessings  of 'that  influence  throughout  the 
vicissitudes  of  a  chequered  life.  It  had  given  tone  and 
strength  to  his  character,  and  in  the  midst  of  manifold  temp- 
tations had  kept  him  true  to  himself  and  his  genius. 

At  wjiat  age  Horace  left  his  father  is  uncertain.  Most 
probably  this  event  occurred  before  he  left  Rome  for  Athens 
to  complete  his  education,  as  was  then  the  practice,  in  the 
Greek  literature  and  philosophy,  under  native  teachers. 
This  he  did  some  time  between  the  age  of  seventeen  and 
twenty.  At  Athens  he  found  many  young  men  of  the 
leading  Roman  families — Bibulus,  Acidinus,  Messala,  and 
the  younger  Cicero — engaged  in  the  same  pursuits  with  him- 
self. His  works  prove  him  to  have  been  no  careless  student 
of  tlie  classics  of  Grecian  literature,  and  with  a  natural  en- 
thusiasm he  made  his  first  poetical  essays  in  their  flexible  and 
noble  language.  With  his  usual  good  sense,  however,  he 
soon  abandoned  the  hopeless  task  of  emulating  the  Greek 
writers  on  their  own  ground,  and  directed  his  efforts  to 
transfusing  into  his  own  language  some  of  the  grace  and 
melody  of  these  masters  of  song.®     In  the  political  lull  be- 

1  Satires,  I.  vi.,  105,  et  seq.  ^  Satires,  I.  vi.,  68,  et  seq. 

8  Satires,  I.  x.,  31-35. 


HORACE.  127 

tween  the  battle  of  Pharsalia,  A.  u.  c.  706  (b.  c.  48),  and 
the  death  of  Julius  Caesar,  a.  u.  c.  710  (b.  c.  44),  Horace 
was  enabled  to  devote  himself  without  interruption  to 
the  tranquil  pursuits  of  the  scholar.  But  when  after  the 
latter  event  Brutus  came  to  Athens,  and  the  patrician  youth 
of  Rome,  fired  with  zeal  for  the  cause  of  republican  liberty, 
joined  his  standard,  Horace  was  infected  by  the  general  en- 
thusiasm, and  accepted  a  military  command  in  the  army 
which  was  destined  to  encounter  the  legions  of  Anthony 
and  Octavius.  His  rank  was  that  of  tribune,  equivalent  to 
a  colonelcy  of  foot  in  our  own  army,  and  for  this  he  must  have 
been  indebted  either  to  the  personal  friendship  of  Brutus  or 
to  an  extraordinary  dearth  of  officers,  seeing  that  he  was  not 
only  without  experience  or  birth  to  recommend  him,  but 
possessed  no  particular  aptitude,  physical  or  moral,  for  a 
military  life.  His  appointment  excited  jealousy  among  his 
brother  officers,  who  considered  that  the  command  of  a  Ilo- 
man  legion  should  have  been  reserved  for  men  of  nobler 
blood.^  It  was  probably  here  that  he  first  came  into  direct 
collision  with  the  aristocratic  prejudices  which  the  training 
of  his  father  had  taught  him  to  defy,  and  which,  at  a  subse- 
quent period,  grudged  to  the  freedman's  son  the  friendship 
of  the  emperor  and  of  Mascenas.  At  the  same  time  he  had 
doubtless  a  strong  party  of  friends,  who  had  learned  to  ap- 
preciate his  genius  and  attractive  qualities.  It  is  certain 
that  he  secured  the  esteem  of  his  commanders,  and  bore  an 
active  part  in  the  perils  and  difficulties  of  the  campaign, 
which  terminated  in  a  total  defeat  of  the  republican  party 
at  Philippi,  a.  u.  c.  712  (b.  c.  42).  A  playful  allusion  by 
himself  to  the  events  of  that  disastrous  field  ^  lias  been 
turned  by  many  of  his  commentators  into  an  admission  of  his 
own  cowardice.  This  is  absurd.  Such  a  confession  is  the 
very  last   which   any  man,  least   of  all  a  Roman,  would 

1  Satires,  I.  yi.,  46,  et  seq.  2  Qdes,  II.  vi.,  9,  et  seq. 


128  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

make.  Horace  says,  addressing  his  friend  Pompoius 
Varius : — 

"  With  thee  I  shared  Philippi's  fiery  flight. 
My  shield  behind  me  left,  which  was  not  well, 
When  all  that  brave  array  was  broke,  and  fell 
In  the  vile  dust  full  many  a  towering  wight." 

Such  an  allusion  to  the  loss  of  his  shield  could  only  have 
been  dropped  by  a  man  who  felt  that  he  had  done  his  duty, 
and  that  it  was  known  that  he  had  done  it.  The  lines  may 
thus  be  safely  regarded,  according  to  the  views  of  Lessing 
and  others,  as  a  not  ungraceful  compliment  to  his  friend, 
who  continued  the  struggle  against  the  triumvirate  with  the 
party  who  threw  themselves  into  the  fleet  of  Sextus  Pom- 
peius.  This  interpretation  is  confirmed  by  the  lat5guage  of 
the  next  verse,  where,  in  the  same  spirit,  he  applies  the 
epithet  "  paventem  "  (craven)  to  himself. 

"  But  me,  poor  craven,  swift  Mercurius  bore, 
Wrapp'd  in  a  cloud  through  all  the  hostile  din, 
While  war's  tumultuous  eddies,  closing  in, 
Swept  thee  away  into  the  strife  once  more." 

It  was  no  shame  in  Horace  to  have  despaired  of  a  cause 
which  its  leaders  had  given  up.  After  the  suicide  of 
Brutus  and  Cassius  the  continuance  of  the  contest  was 
hopeless ;  and  Horace  may  in  his  short  military  career  have 
seen,  in  the  jealousy  and  selfish  ambition  of  many  of  his 
party,  enough  to  make  him  suspicious  of  success,  even  if 
that  had  been  attainable.  Republicans  who  sneered  at  the 
treedman's  son  were  not  likely  to  found  any  system  of 
liberty  worthy  of  the  name. 

When  Horace  found  his  way  back  to  Italy  it  was  to  find 
his  paternal  acres  confiscated.  His  life  was  spared,  but 
nothing  was«left  him  to  sustain  it  but  his  pen  and  his  good 
spirits.     He   had  to  write  for  bread  —  Paupertas  impulit 


HORACE.  129 

audax  ut  versus  facer  em  ^  —  and  in  so  doing  he  appears  to 
have  acquired  not  only  considerable  repute,  but  also  suffi- 
cient means  to  purchase  the  place  of  scribe  in  the  Qutestor's 
office,  a  sort  of  sinecure  Clerkship  of  the  Treasury,  which 
he  continued  to  hold  for  many  years,  if  not  to  the  close  of 
his  life.^  It  was  upon  his  return  to  Rome  that  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Virgil  and  Varius,  who  were  already  famous, 
and  to  them  he  was  indebted  for  his  introduction  to  M«- 
cenas.  The  particulars  of  his  first  interview  with  his  patron 
he  has  himself  recorded.'  It  is  a  curious  circumstance  in 
the  history  of  a  friendship,  among  the  closest  and  most 
affectionate  on  record,  that  nine  months  elapsed  after  their 
meeting  before  Maecenas  again  summoned  the  poet  to  his 
house,  and  enrolled  him  in  the  list  of  his  intimate  friends. 
The  event  took  place  in  the  third  year  after  the  battle  of 
Philippi  ;  and  as  the  only  claim  of  Horace,  the  man  of 
hjimble  origin  and  the  retainer  of  a  defeated  party,  to  the 
notice  of  the  minister  of  Augustus  must  have  been  his 
literary  reputation,  it  is  obvious  that  even  at  this  early 
period  he  had  established  his  position  among  the  wits  and 
men  of  letters  in  the  capital.  The  acquaintance  rapidly 
ripened  into  mutual  esteem.  It  secured  the  position  of  the 
poet  in  society,  and  tlie  generosity  of  the  statesman  placed 
him  above  the  anxieties  of  a  literary  life.  Throughout  the 
intimate  intercourse  of  thirty  years  which  ensued  there  was 
no  trace  of  condescension  on  the  one  hand,  nor  of  servility 
on  the  other.  Maecenas  gave  the  poet  the  place  next  his 
heart.  He  must  have  respected  the  man  who  never  used 
his  influence  to  obtain  those  favors  which  were  within  the  dis- 
posal of  the  emperor's  minister,  who  cherished  an  honest 
pride  in  his  own  station,  and  who  could  be  grateful  without 
being  obsequious.     Horace  is  never  weary  of  acknowledg- 

1  Epistles,  II.  ii.,  51.  a  Satires,  II.  vi.,  36. 

^  Satires,  I.  vi.,  55,  et  seq. 


ISO  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

ing  how  much  he  owes  to  his  friend.  When  lie  praises  him, 
it  is  without  flattery.  When  he  soothes  his  anxieties,  or 
calms  his  fears,  the  sincerity  of  Ills  sympathy  is  apparent  in 
the  warmth  of  his  ,words.  When  he  resists  his  patron's 
wishes,  he  is  firm  without  rudeness.  When  he  sports  with 
his  foibles,  he  is  familiar  without  the  slightest  shade  of  im- 
pertinence. 

By  Maecenas  Horace  was  introduced  to  Octavius,  most 
probably  soon  after  the  period  just  referred  to.  In  A.  u. 
c.  717,  a  year  after  Horace  had  been  admitted  into  the 
circle  of  his  friends,  Maecenas  went  to  Brundusium,  charged 
by  Octavius  to  negotiate  a  treaty  with  Marcus  Antonius. 
On  this  journey  he  was  accomjjanied  by  Horace,  who  has 
left  a  graphic  record  of  its  incidents.^  It  is  probable  that 
on  this  occasion  or  about  this  time  the  poet  was  brought  to 
the  notice  of  the  future  emperor.  Between  the  time  of  his 
return  from  this  journey  and  the  year  722,  Horace,  who  had 
in  the  mean  time  given  to  the  world  many  of  his  poems,  in- 
cluding the  ten  Satires  of  the  first  book,  received  from  Mae- 
cenas the  gift  of  the  Sabine  farm,  which  at  once  afforded 
him  a  competency  and  all  the  pleasures  of  a  country  life. 
The  gift  was  a  slight  one  for  Maecenas  to  bestow,  but  he  no 
doubt  made  it  as  the  fittest  and  most .  welcome  which  he 
could  have  offered  to  his  friend.  It  made  Horace  happy. 
It  gave  him  leisure  and  amusement,  and  opportunities  for 
that  calm  intercourse  with  nature  which  he  "  needed  for  his 
spirit's  health."  Never  was  a  gift  better  bestowed  or  better 
requited.  It  at  once  prompted  much  of  that  poetry  which 
has  made  Maecenas  famous,  and  has  afforded  ever  new 
delight  to  successive  generations.  The  Sabine  farm  was  sit- 
uated in  a  romantic  valley  about  fifteen  miles  from  Tibur 
(Tivoli),  and  among  its  other  charms,  possessed  the  valuable 
attraction  for  Horace,  that  it  was  within  an  easy  distance  of 

1  Satires,  I.  v. 


HORACE. 


131 


Rome.  When  his  spirits  wanted  the  stimulus  of  society  or 
the  bustle  of  the  capital,  which  they  often  did,  his  ambling 
mule  could  speedily  convey  him  thither;  and  when  jaded 
on  the  other  hand  by 

"  The  noise,  and  strife,  and  questions  wearisome, 
And  the  vain  splendors  of  imperial  Rome," 

he  could  by  the  same  easy  means  of  transport,  in  a  few 
hours  bury  himself  among  the  hills,  and  there,  under  the 
shadow  of  his  favorite  Lucretilis,  or  by  the  banks  of  the 
Digentia,  either  stretch  himself  to  dream  upon  the  grass, 
lulled  by  the  murmurs  of  the  stream,  or  look  after  the  cul- 
ture of  his  fields,  and  fancy  himself  a  farmer.  The  site  of 
this  farm  has  been  pretty  accurately  ascertained,  and  it  is 
at  the  present  day  a  favorite  resort  of  travellers,  especially 
of  Englishmen,  who  visit  it  in  such  numbers,  and  trace  its 
features  with  so  much  enthusiasm,  that  the  resident  peas- 
antry, "who  cannot  conceive  of  any  other  source  of  in- 
terest in  one  so  long  dead  and  unsainted,  than  that  of  co-pa- 
triotism or  consanguinity,"  believe  Horace  to  have  been 
an  Englishman.*  The  property  was  of  moderate  size,  and 
produced  corn,  olives,  and  wine,  but  was  not  highly  culti- 
vated. Here  Horace  spent  a  considerable  part  of  every 
year.  Latterly,  when  his  health  failed,  he  passed  the  win- 
ter in  the  milder  air  of  a  villa  at  Tivoli.  The  Sabine  farm 
was  very  retired,  being  about  four  miles  from  Varia  (Vico 
Varo),  the  nearest  town,  well  covered  with  timber,  and 
traversed  by  a  small  but  sparkling  stream.  It  gave  em- 
ployment to  five  families  of  free  coloni,  who  were  under  the 
superintendence  of  a  bailiflf;  and,  besides  these,  eight  slaves 
were  attached  to  the  poet's  establishment.  With  his  inex- 
pensive habits  this  little  property  was  sufficient  for  all  his 
wants  (Satis  beatus  unicis  Sabinis).     Here  he  could  enter- 

1  Letter  by  Mr.  Dennis.  —  Milman's  Uorace,  London,  1849,  p.  109 


132  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

tain  a  stray  friend  from  town,  —  his  patron  Maecenas,  upon 
occasion,  —  and  the  delights  of  this  agreeable  retreat  and 
the  charm  of  the  poet's  society,  were  doubtless  more  than  a 
compensation  for  the  plain  fare  or  the  thin  home-grown 
wine.  Vile  Sabinum,  with  which  its  resources  alone  enabled 
him  to  regale  them. 

The  life  of  Horace  from  the  time  of  his  intimacy  with 
Maecenas  appears  to  have  been  one  of  comparative  ease 
and  of  great  social  enjoyment.  Augustus  soon  admitted 
him  to  his  favor,  and  sought  to  attach  him  to  his  person  in 
the  capacity  of  secretary.  This  offer  Horace  was  prudent 
and  firm  enough  to  decline ;  while  at  the  same  time  he  had 
the  tact  not  to  offend  the  master  of  the  world  by  his  re- 
fusal. To  the  close  of  his  life  his  favor  at  court  continued 
without  a  cloud.  Augustus  not  only  liked  the  man,  but 
entertained  a  profound  admiration  for  the  poet.  Believing 
in  the  immortality  of  his  writings,  it  was  natural  the  em- 
peror should  cultivate  the  good-will  and  seek  to  secure  the 
"  deathless  meed  "  of  his  favorite's  song.  That  Horace  had 
fought  with  Brutus  against  him  was  no  prejudice.  To  have 
espoused  the  cause,  and  enjoyed  the  confidence  of  one 
whose  nobility  of  purpose  his  adversaries  never  scrupled  to 
acknowledge,  formed,  indeed,  in  itself  a  claim  upon  his  suc- 
cessful rival's  esteem.  Horace  was  no  renegade;  he  was 
not  ashamed  of  the  past,  and  Maecenas  and  Augustus  were 
just  the  men  to  respect  him  for  his  independence,  and  to 
like  him  the  better  for  it.  They  could  appreciate  his  supe- 
riority to  the  herd  of  time-servers  around  them ;  and  like 
all  the  greatest  actors  on  the  political  stage,  they  were  above 
the  petty  rancors  of  party  jealousy,  or  the  desire  to  enforce 
a  renunciation  of  convictions  opposite  to  their  own.  It  was 
by  never  stooping  to  them  unduly  that  Horace  secured  their 
esteem,  and  maintained  himself  upon  a  footing  of  equality 
with  them  as  nearly  as  the  difference  of  rank  would  allow. 
Thf>rp  is  no  reason  to  suspect  Horace,  in  the  praises  which 


HORACE.  133 

he  has  recorded  of  Augustus,  either  of  insincerity  or  syco- 
phancy. He  was  able  to  contrast  the  comparative  security 
of  hfe  and  property,  the  absence  of  political  turmoil,  and 
the  development  of  social  ease  and  happiness,  which  his 
country  enjoyed  under  the  masterly  administration  of  Au- 
gustus, with  the  disquietudes  and  strife  under  which  it  had 
languished  for  so  many  years.  The  days  of  a  republic  had 
gone  by,  and  an  enhghtened  despotism  must  have  been  wel- 
comed by  a  country  shaken  by  a  long  period  of  civil  commo- 
tion, and  sick  of  seeing  itself  played  for  as  the  stake  of 
reckless  and  ambitious  men.  He  was  near  enough  to  the 
councils  of  the  world's  master  to  see  his  motives  and  to 
appi'eciate  his  policy ;  and  his  intimate  personal  intercourse 
with  both  Augustus  and  Maecenas  no  doubt  enabled  him  to 
do  fuller  justice  both  to  their  intentions  and  their  capacity, 
than  was  possible  perhaps  to  any  other  man  of  his  time. 
The  envy  which  his  intimacy  with  these  two  foremost 
men  of  all  the  world  for  a  time  excited  in  Roman  so- 
ciety by  degrees  gave  way,  as  years  advanced,  and  the 
causes  of  their  esteem  came  to  be  better  understood.  Their 
favor  did  not  spoil  him.  He  was  ever  the  same  kindly, 
urbane,  and  simple  man  of  letters  he  had  originally  been. 
He  never  presumed  upon  his  position,  or  looked  super- 
ciliously on  others  less  favored  than  himself.  At  all  times 
generous  and  genial,  years  only  mellowed  his  wisdom,  and 
gave  a  sharper  lustre  to  the  beauty  of  his  verse. 

The  unaffected  sincerity  of  his  nature,  and  the  rich  vein 
of  his  genius,  made  him  courted  by  the  rich  and  noble.^ 
He  mixed  on  easy  terms  with  the  choicest  society  of  Rome, 
and  what  a  society  must  that  have  been  which  included 
Virgil,  Varius,  Plotius,  Tibullus,  PoUio,  and  a  host  of  others, 
who  were  not  only  ripe  scholars,  but  had  borne  and  were 
bearing  a  leading  part  in  the  great  actions  and  events  of 

1  Odes,  II.  xvii.,  9,  el  seq. 
12 


184  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

that  memorable  epoch  ?     It  is  to  this  period  that  the  compo- 
sition of  his  principal  odes  is  to  be  attributed.     To  these, 
of  all  his  writings,  Horace   himself  ascribed   the  greatest 
value,  and  on  these  he  rested  his  claims  to  posthumous  fame. 
They  were  the  result  of  great  labor,  as  he  himself  indicates : 
*'  Operosa  parvus  Carmina  fingo,"^  and  yet  they  bear  preemi- 
nently the   charm   of  simplicity  and    ease.      He   was   the 
first  to  mould  the  Latin  tongue  to  the  Greek  lyric  measures ; 
and  his  success  in  this  difficult  task  may  be  estimated  from 
the  fact,  that  as  he  was  the  first  so  was  he  the  greatest  of 
the  Roman  lyrists.     Quinctilian's  criticism   upon   him    can 
scarcely   be   improved :   "  Lyricorum    Horatius   fere    solus 
legi  dignus.     Nam   et  insurgit   aliquando,  et  plenus  est  ju- 
cunditatis  et  gratiae,  et  vai'iis  figuris,  et  verbis  felicissime 
audax."     In  this  airy  and  playful  grace,  in  happy  epithets, 
in  variety  of  imagery,  and  exquisite  felicity  of  expression, 
the  Odes  are  still  unsurpassed  among  the  writings  of  any 
period  or  language.     If  they  want  the  inspiration  of  a  great 
motive  or  the  fervor  and  resonance  of  the  finest  lyrics  of 
Greece,  they  possjcss  at  all  events  an  exquisite  grace  and 
terseness  of  expression,  a  power  of  painting  an  image  or 
expressing  a  thought  in  the  fewest  and  fittest  words,  and  a 
melody   of  tone,   which  imbue   them  with  a   charm   quite 
peculiar,  and  have  given  them  a  hold  upon  the  minds  of 
educated  men,  which  no  change  of  taste  has  shaken.     That 
they  are  inferior  to  his  Greek  models  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at.     Even  although  Horace   had  possessed  the  genius  of 
Pindar  or  Sappho,  it  is  doubtful  whether,  writing  in  an  arti- 
ficial  language,    which    he   was  compelled  to   make   more 
artificial  by  the  adoption  of  Grecian  terms  of  expression, 
and  being  therefore  without  the  free  and  genial  medium  of 
expression   which  they  had   at  command,  he  could   have 
found  an  adequate  utterance  for  his  inspiration.     But  his 

1  Odes,  IV.  ii.,  31. 


HORACE.  135 

genius  was  akin  to  neither  of  these ;  and  that  good  sense, 
which  is  his  great  characteristic,  withheld  him  from  ever 
either  soaring  too  high  or  attempting  to  sustain  his  flight  too 
long.     He   knew  the  measure   of  his   powers,   and  in   his 
greatest  efforts,  therefore,  no  undue  strain  upon  them  is  to 
be    detected.     His   power   of  passion   is   limited,    and    his 
strokes  of  pathos   are  few  and  slight.     Above  all,  he  did 
not  possess  the  faculty,*  which,  in  a  lyrical  writer,  is  the 
highest,  of  losing   himself  in  a   great    theme.     Whatever 
subject  he  treats,  we  neve^lose  sight  of  the  poet  in  the 
poem.     This  quality,  while  it  is  fatal  to  lyric  poetry  of  the 
liighest  class,  helps,  however,  to   heighten   the   charm  of 
the  mass  of  his  odes,  especially  those  which  are  devoted  to 
his  friends,  or  which  breathe  the  delight  with  which  thfe 
contact    with    the   ever   fresh   beauties  of  natural  scenery 
inspired  him.     Into  these  he  throws  his  whole  heart,  and  in 
them  we  feel  the  fascination  which  made  him  beloved  by 
those  who  came  within  the  circle  of  his  personal  influence, 
and  which  makes  him  as  it  were,  the  well  known  and  inti- 
mate ft'iend  of  all  to  whom  his  writings  are  a  famihar  study. 
Horace  was  not  and  could  not  have  been  a  national  poet. 
He  wrote  only  for  cultivated  men,  and  under  the  shadow  of 
a  court.     The  very  language  in  which  he  wrote  must  have 
been  unintelligible  to  the  people,  and  he  had  none  of  those 
popular  sympathies  which   inspire  the  lyrics  of  Burns  or 
Beranger.     The  Roman  population  of  his  time  was  perhaps 
as  little  likely  to  command   his  respect  as  any  which  the 
world  has  ever  seen  ;  and  there  was  no  people,  in  the  sense 
in  which  we  understand  the  word,  to  appeal  to.     And  yet 
Horace  has  many  points  in  common  with  Burns.    "  A  man  's 
a  man  for  a'  that,"  in  the  whole  vein  of  its  sentiment  is 
thoroughly  Horatian ;  but  the  glow  which  kindles  the  heart 
and  fires  the  brain  is  subdued  to  a  temperate  heat  in  the 
gentler  and  physically  less  energetic  nature  of  Horace.     In 
his  amatory  verses  the  same  distinction  is  visible.     None 


136  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

of  hi3  erotic  poems  are  vivified  by  those  gushes  of  emotion 
which  animate  the  love  poetry  of  the  poets  we  have  named, 
and  of  other  modern  song  writers.  Never  indeed  was  love 
less  ideal  or  intense  in  a  poet  of  unquestionable  power. 
Horace  is  not  insensible  to  beauty.  No  writer  hits  off  with 
greater  neatness  the  portrait  of  a  beauty,  or  conjures  up 
more  skilfully  before  his  reader  an  image  of  seductive  grace. 
But  the  fire  of  genuine  passion  is  tvanting.  Horace's  ardor 
Beems  never  to  have  risen  above  the  transient  flush  of 
desire.  His  heart  is  whole  th^jpgh  Cupid  may  have  clapped 
him  on  the  shoulder.  The  Lalages  and  Lyces,  the  Glyceras 
and  Phrynes  of  his  Odes  are  pretty  playthings  of  an  hour, 
who  amused  his  fancy  and  delighted  his  senses,  but  never 
robbed  him  of  a  night's  repose  or  of  a  day's  appetite.  The 
attempt  to  make  them  out  as  real  objects  of  attachment,  is 
one  of  the  many  follies  in  which  his  commentators  have 
wasted  much  dreary  labor.  Horace  might,  no  doubt,  have 
Bung  of  himself,  like  B6ranger,  in  his  youth,  — 

"  J'avais  vingt  ans  une  folle  maitresse, 
Des  francs  amis,  et  I'amour  de  chansons,"  — 

and  even  when  he  could  count  eight  lustres,  despite  his  own 
protest,^  his  senses  were  probably  not  dead  to  the  attractions 
of  a  fine  ankle,  or  a  pretty  face,  or  to  the  fascinations  of  a 
sweet  smile,  or  a  musical  voice.  But  his  passions  were  too 
well  controlled,  and  his  love  of  ease  too  strong,  to  have 
admitted  of  so  many  flirtations  as  would  be  implied  in  the 
supposition  that  Tyndaris,  Myrtale,  and  a  score  of  others, 
were  actual  favorites  of  the  bard.  To  sing  of  beauty  has 
always  been  the  poet's  privilege  and  delight ;  and  to  record 
the  lover's  pains  an  easy  and  popular  theme.  Horace,  the 
wit  and  friend  of  wits,  was  not  likely  to  be  out  of  the  mode, 

1  Odes,  II.  4,  21,  et  seq. 


HORACE.  137 

and  so  he  sang  of  love  and  beauty  according  to  his  fashion. 
Very  airy  and  playful  and  pleasant  is  that  fashion,  and,  for 
his  time,  in  the  main  comparatively  pure^  and  chaste ;  but 
we  seek  in  vain  for  the  tenderness,  the  negj^tion  of  self,  and 
the  pathos,  which  are  the  soul  of  all  true  love  poetry. 
"  His  love  ditties,"  it  has  been  well  said,  "  are,  as  it  were, 
like  flowers,  beautiful  in  form,  and  rich  in  hues,  but  with- 
out the  scent  that  breathes  to  the  heart."  It  is  certain 
that  many  of  them  are  merely  imitations  of  Greek  originals. 
His  Satires  and  Mpistles  are  less  read,  yet  they  are  per- 
haps more  intrinsically  valuable  than  his  lyric  poetry. 
They  are  of  very  various  merit,  written  at  different  periods 
of  his  life,  and  although  the  order  of  their  composition  may 
be  difficult  to  define  with  certainty,  much  may  be  inferred, 
even  from  the  internal  evidence  of  style  and  subject,  as  to 
ihe  development  of  the  poet's  genius.  This  subject  has 
engaged  much  of  the  attention  of  the  commentators,  and  all 
concur  in  placing  the  Satires  first,  and  the  Epistles,  includ- 
ing the  Epistle  to  the  Pisos,  De  Arte  Poeticd,  last  in  the 
order  of  date.  As  reflecting  "  the  age  and  body  of  the 
time,"  they  possess  the  highest  historical  value.  Through 
them  the  modern  scholar  is  able  to  form  a  clearer  idea  of 
the  state  of  society  in  Rome  in  the  Augustan  age  than  of  any 
other  phase  of  social  development  in  the  history  of  nations. 
Mingling,  as  he  did,  freely  with  men  of  all  ranks  and  pas- 
sions, and  himself  untouched  by  the  ambition  of  wealth  or 
influence  which  absorbed  them  in  the  struggle  of  society, 
he  enjoyed  the  best  of  opportunities  for  observation,  and  he 
used  them  diligently.  Horace's  observation  of  character 
is  subtle  and  exact,  his  knowledge  of  the  heart  is  profound, 
his  power  of  graphic  delineation  great;  a  genial  humor 
plays  over  his  verses,  and  a  kindly  wisdom  dignifies  them. 
Never  were  the  maxims  of  social  prudence  and  practical 
good  sense  inculcated  in  so  pleasing  a  form  as  in  the  Epistles. 
The  vein  of  his  satire  is  delicate  yet  racy,  and  he  stimulates 

12* 


138  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  amuses,  but  rarely  offends  by  indelicacy,  or  outrages 
by  coarseness.     He  does  not  spare  himself  upon  occasion. 

His  sarcasms,  moreover,  have  no  spice  of  malignity, 
neither  are  th(^  tinged  by  the  satirist's  vice  of  vaunting 
his  superiority  to  his  neighbors.  For  fierceness  of  invec- 
tive, or  loftiness  of  moral  tone^he  is  inferior  to  Juvenal ;  but 
the  vices  of  his  time  were  less  calculated  to  provoke  the 
"  sseva  indignatio,"  or  to  call  for  the  stern  moral  censure 
of  the  satirist  of  a  more  recent  date.  He  deals  rather  with 
the  weakness  and  follies,  than  with  the  vices  or  crimes  of 
mankind,  and  his  appeals  are  directed  to  their  judgment  and 
practical  sense  rather  than  to  their  conscience.  The  idea 
of  duty  or  absolute  right  is  not  a  prominent  one  with 
Horace.  He  inculcates  what  is  fitting  and  decorous,  and 
tends  most  to  tranquillity  of  mind  and  body,  rather  than  the 
severe  virtues  of  a  high  standard  of  moral  purity.  To  liv» 
at  peace  with  the  world,  to  shun  the  extremes  of  avarice, 
luxury,  and  ambition,  to  outrage  none  of  the  laws  of  nature, 
to  enjoy  life  wisely,  and  not  to  load  it  with  cares  which  the 
lapse  of  a  few  brief  years  will  demonstrate  to  be  foolishness, 
is  very  nearly  the  sum  of  his  philosophy.  Of  religion,  as 
we  understand  it,  he  had  little.  He  was,  however,  too 
observant  of  the  world  around  him,  and  too  habitually  ac- 
customed to  look  into  his  own  soul,  not  to  have  been  pro- 
foundly impressed  with  the  evidences  of  Supreme  Wisdom 
governing  the  machine  of  the  universe,  and  to  have  felt  as- 
pirations for  a  future  in  which  the  mysteries  of  the  present 
world  should  find  a  solution.  Although  himself  little  of  a 
practical  worshipper  — parens  deorum  cultor  et  infrequens  — 
he  respected  the  sincerity  of  others  in  their  belief  in  the  old 
gods.  But  in  common  with  the  more  vigorous  intellects  of 
the  time,  he  had  outgrown  the  effete  creed  of  his  country- 
men. He  could  not  accept  the  mythology,  about  which  the 
forms  of  the  contemporary  worship  still  clustered.  The  rela- 
tion of  the  universe  to  its  Maker  was  a  mystery  to  him,  and 


HORACE.  139 

the  agency  of  an  active  Providence,  if  it  occasionally 
startled  him  out  of  the  easy  indifference  of  a  vain  philoso- 
phy, seems  to  have  been  by  no  means  a  permanent  convic- 
tion of  his  mind,  influencing  his  actions,  or  giving  a  lofty 
sweep  to  his  speculations.  The  morality  of  enlightened 
and  far-seeing  wisdom  was  attainable  by  such  a  mind,  and 
it  was  attained  ;  but  to  the  divine  spirit,  which  raised  some  of 
the  ancient  writers  almost  to  a  level  with  the  inspired  au- 
thors of  the  books  of  our  faith,  Horace  has  no  claim.  As  a 
living  and  brilliant  commentary  on  life,  as  a  storehouse  of 
maxims  of  practical  wisdom,  couched  in  language  the  most 
apt  and  concise,  as  sketches  of  men  and  manners,  which  will 
be  always  fresh  and  always  true,  because  they  were  true 
once,  and  because  human  nature  will  always  reproduce  itself 
under  analogous  circumstances,  his  Satires,  and  still  more 
his  Epistles,  will  have  a  permanent  value  for  mankind.  In 
these,  too,  as  in  his  Odes,  Horace  helped  materially  in  giv- 
ing to  the  Latin  language  the  highest  amount  of  polish  of 
which  it  is  susceptible. 

At  no  time  very  robust,  Horace's  health  appears  to  ha^'e 
declined  some  years  before  his  death.  He  was  doomed  to 
see  some  of  his  most  valued  friends  drop  into  the  grave 
before  him.  This  to  him,  who  gave  to  friendship  the  ardor 
which  other  men  give  to  love,  was  the  severest  wound  that 
time  could  bring.  Youth,  and  si^irits,  and  health,  the  inevit- 
able decay  of  nature,  saddened  the  thoughtful  poet  in  his  sol- 
itude, and  tinged  the  gayest  society  with  melancholy.  But 
the  loss  of  friends,  the  brothers  of  his  soul,  of  Virgil,  Quinc- 
tUius,  TibuUus,*  and  others,  and  ultimately  of  Maecenas,  with- 
out that  hope  of  reunion  which  springs  from  the  cheering 
faith  which  was  soon  afterwards  to  be  revealed  to  the  world, 
must  have  by  degrees  stripped  life  of  most  of  its  charms. 
Singula  de  nobis  anni  prcedantur  euntes  ^   is  a  cheerless 

1  Epistles,  II.  ii.,  55. 


140  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

reflection  to  the  man  who  has  no  assured  hope  beyond  the 
present  time.  Maecenas's  health  was  a  source  of  deep 
anxiety  to  him,  and  one  of  the  most  exquisite  odes  (the  17th 
of  the  2nd  book),  addressed  to  him,  in  answer  to  some  out- 
burst of  despondency,  while  it  expresses  the  depth  of  the 
poet's  regard,  bears  in  it  the  tones  of  a  man  somewhat 
weary  of  the  world :  — 

"  Ah  !  if  untimely  fate  should  snatch  thee  hence, 
Thee,  of  my  soul  a  part, 
Why  should  I  linger  on,  with  deaden'd  sense. 

And  ever  aching  heart, 
A  worthless  fragment  of  a  fallen  shrine  ? 
No,  no !     One  day  beholds  thy  death  and  mine  ! 

"  Think  not  that  I  have  sworn  a  bootless  oath  ! 
Yes,  we  shall  go,  shall  go. 
Hand  linked  in  hand,  whene'er  thou  leadest,  both 
The  last  sad  road  below  ! " 

The  prophecy  seems  to  have  been  realized  almost  to 
the  letter.  The  same  year  (a.  u.  c.  786,  b.  c.  8)  witnessed 
the  death  of  both  Horace  and  Maecenas.  The  latter  died 
in  the  middle  of  the  year,  bequeathing  his  friend,  in  almost 
his  last  words,  to  the  care  of  Augustus :  Horatii  Flacci,  ut 
mei,  esto  memor.  On  the  27th  of  November,  when  he  was 
on  the  eve  of  completing  his  fifty-seventh  year,  Horace 
himself  died,  of  an  illness  so  sharp  and  sudden,  that  he  was 
unable  to  make  his  will  in  writing.  He  declared  it  verbally 
before  witnesses,  leaving  the  little  all  which  <he  possessed  to 
Augustus.  He  was  buried  on  the  Esquiline  Hill,  near  his 
patron  and  friend  Maecenas.  No  trace  of  the  tombs  of 
either  remains ;  but  the  name  and  fame  of  both  are  inextri- 
cably^ entwined,  and  can  only  perish  with  the  decay  of  liter- 
ature itself.  The  fame  of  Horace  was  at  once  established. 
In  the  days  of  Juvenal  he  shared  with  Virgil  the  doubtful 


HORACE.  141 

hoilbr  bf  being  a  scBool-book.^  That  honor  he  still  enjoys ; 
but  it  is  only  by  minds  matured  by  experience  and  reflection 
that  Horace  can  be  thoroughly  appreciated.  To  them  the 
depth  of  his  observation,  and  the  reach  of  his  good  sense 
are  made  daily  more  apparent;  and  the  verses  which 
charmed  their  fancy  or  delighted  their  ear  in  youth,  became 
the  counsellors  of  their  manhood,  or  the  mirror  which  focal- 
izes for  their  old  age  the  gathered  wisdom  of  a  lifetime. 
No  writer  is  so  often  quoted,  and  simply  because  the 
thoughts  of  none  are  more  pertinent  to  men's  "  business  and 
bosoms  "  in  the  concerns  of  every-day  life,  amid  the  jostle 
of  a  crowded  and  artificial  state  of  society ;  and  because 
the  glimpses  of  nature,  in  which  his  writings  abound,  come 
with  the  freshness  of  truth,  alike  to  the  jaded  dwellers  in 
cities,  and  to  those  who  can  test  them  day  by  day  in  the 
presence  of  nature  herself.  To  Petrarch  and  Wordsworth 
he  was  a  favorite  study.  Richard  Hooker  made  him  a 
manual.  Louis  XVIII.  had  him  by  heart;  and  there  is 
scarcely  a  statesman  of  eminence  in  whose  mouth  his  say- 
ings are  not  household  words. 

There  are  no  authentic  busts  or  medallions  of  Horace, 
and  his  descriptions  of  himself  are  vague.  He  was  short 
in  stature ;  his  eyes  and  hair  were  dark,  but  the  latter  was 
early  silvered  with  gray.  He  suffered  at  one  time  from  an 
affection  of  the  eyes,  and  seems  to  have  been  by  no  means 
robust  in  constitution.  His  habits  were  temperate  and  fru- 
gal, as  a  rule,  although  he  was  far  from  insensible  to  the 
charms  of  a  good  table  and  good  wine,  heightening  and 
heightened  by  the  zest  of  good  company.  But  he  seems  to 
have  had  neither  the  stomach  nor  the  taste  for  habitual  in- 
dulgence in  the  pleasures  of  the  table.  In  youth  he  was 
hasty  and  choleric,  but  easily  placable ;  and  to  the  last 
he  probably  shared  in  some  degree  the  irritability  which 

1  Juvenal,  Satires,  VII.,  226. 


142  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

he  ascribes  to  his  class.  At  the  saiffe  time,  if  hfs  ^^t- 
ings  be  any  index  to  his  mind,  his  temper  was  habitu- 
ally sweet  and  well  under  control.  Like  all  playful  men,  a 
tinge  of  melancholy  colored  his  life,  if  that  is  to  be  called 
melancholy  which  is  more  properly  only  that  sense  of  the 
incompleteness  and  insufficiency  of  life  for  the  desires  of  the 
soul,  which  must  be  deeply  seated  in  all  earnest  natures. 
Latterly  he  became  corpulent,  and  sensitive  to  the  severity 
of  the  seasons,  and  sought  at  Baiae  and  Tivoli  the  refresh- 
ment or  shelter  which  his  mountain  retreat  had  ceased  to 
yield  to  his  delicate  frame. 

The  chronology  of  the  poems  of  Horace  has  been  the 
source  of  much  critical  controversy.  The  earlier  labors  of 
Bentley,  Masson,  Dacier,  and  Sanadon  have  been  followed  up 
in  modern  times  by  those  of  Passow,  Walckenaer,  Weber, 
Grotefend,  and  Stallbaum  abroad,  and  of  Tate  and  Milraan 
at  home.  As  the  subject  is  not  one  which  admits  of  cer- 
tainty, the  speculation  is .  endless,  and  must  always  be  in  a 
great  measure  unsatisfactory.  The  general  result  may  be 
stated  as  follows.  The  Satires  and  Epodes  were  first  in  the 
order  of  composition,  having  been  written  between  the  years 
713  and  725,  after  the  return  of  Horace  to  Rome,  and 
before  the  close  of  the  civil  wars  consequent  upon  the  defeat 
of  Antony  and  his  party.  The  two  first  books  of  Odes  ap- 
peared between  this  period  and  the  year  730.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  first  book  of  Epistles.  The  third  book  of  Odes 
appears  to  have  been  composed  about  the  year  735,  the 
Carmen  Seculare  in  737,  and  the  fourth  book  of  Odes 
between  737  and  741.  The  second  book  of  Epistles  may 
be  assigned  to  the  period  between  741  and  746 ;  and  to  the 
same  period  may  be  ascribed  the  composition  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Pisos.  The  results  of  the  speculations  of  Bentley  and 
several  of  the  leading  critics  are  presented  in  a  tabular  form 
in  the  admirable  edition  of  Horace  published  by  Firmin 
Didot,  Paris,  1855,  with  the  commentary  of  Diibner,  which 


HORACE.  143 

is  a  model  at  once  of  typographical  beauty  and  editorial 
skill. 

For  a  list  of  the  best  editions  of  Horace,  and  of  the 
numerous  works  on  the  topography  and  chronology  of  his 
poems,  reference  may  be  made  to  Smith's  Dictionary  of 
Greek  and  Roman  Biography  and  Mythology,  London,  1850, 
sub  voce  Horatius. 

The  translations  of  Horace  into  all  the  European  lan- 
guages ar^  numerous.  The  English  versions  are  more 
numerous  than  successful.  Pope  and  Swift,  in  their  imita- 
tions, have  caught  more  of  his  manner  than  any  of  the 
translators :  and  probably,  the  rendering  which  will  convey 
the  best  idea  of  his  peculiar  chai'm  will  be.  that  which  hits  a 
happy  medium  between  the  literal  and  the  paraphrastic. 
The  translation  of  Francis,  which  long  held  a  place  as  the 
English  representative  of  this  classic,  is  a  poor  perform- 
ance, and  is  rapidly  falling  into  merited  oblivion.  That  of 
Wrangham  is  weak,  colorless,  and  trivial.  Of  late  years 
many  versions  have  issued  from  the  press,  among  which 
those  of  F.  W.  Newman,  London,  1853  ;  Melville,  London, 
1850;  and  Robinson,  London,  1846-55;  are  chiefly  re- 
markable. But  a  good  English  Horace  is  still  a  desidera- 
tum, and,  if  ever  supplied,  it  will  probably  be  the  result  of 
the  combined  labors  of  many  hands. 


ROBERT  HALL. 


Robert  Hall,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  writers  and 
preachers  England  has  produced,  was  born  at  Arnsby,  near 
Leicester,  May  2,  1764.  His  father  was  the  minister  of 
the  Baptist  congregation  in  that  place,  and  the  author  of 
several  religious  publications,  one  of  which  obtained  consid- 
erable popularity.  His  character  has  been  sketched  by  his 
more  celebrated  son,  from  whose  testimony,  as  well  as  that 
of  less  partial  witnesses,  he  appears  to  have  been  a  man  of 
no  little  ability  and  worth.  Nor  was  Robei't  Hall  less  happy 
in  his  other  parent  —  his  mother  being  a  woman  of  excel- 
lent sense  and  eminent  piety.  He  lost  her  when  he  was 
but  twelve  years  of  age  (1776)  ;  his  father  lived  to  rejoice 
in  his  son's  dawning  fame.     He  died  in  1791. 

Robert  was-  the  youngest  of  fourteen  children.  His 
infancy  —  like  that  of  Newton,  Locke,  and  Pascal,  in  whom 
the  flame  of  life  flickered  as  if  it  would  go  out  almost  as 
«Qon  as  kindled,  while  in  the  two  last  it  but  flickered  all 
their  days  —  was  extremely  sickly,  and  for  some  years  there 
was  hardly  any  hope  of  rearing  him.  As  if  to  remind  us 
how  little  we  can  anticipate  the  course  of  life,  a  full  propor- 
tion of  the  great  minds  that  have  astonished  and  adorned 
the  world,  have  come  into  it  as  if  under  sentence  of  imme- 
diately quitting  it,  with  the  worst  possible  promise  of  the 
great  things  they  were  destined  to  achieve. 

(144) 


ROBERT    HALL.  145 

Robert  Hall's  childhood  was,  as  we  shall  presently  see, 
unusually  precocious  —  far  more  so  than  even  that  of  most 
of  the  sons  of  genius ;  nor  was  the  promise  of  the  bright 
dawn,  so  often  delusive,  clouded  as  the  day  went  on.  It  is 
said  that  he  learned  to  talk  and  to  read  almost  at  tlie  same 
time ;  his  letters  were  assuredly  learned  in  a  strange  school 
and  from  strange  books,  that  is,  in  a  graveyard,  and  from 
tombstones.  The  graveyard  was  adjacent  to  his  father's 
house,  and  thither  his  nurse  used  to  carry  him  for  "  air " 
and  "  exercise."  Whether  a  cemetery  be  the  best  place  for 
childhood  to  take  its  "  airings "  in,  or  epitaphs  the  best 
spelling-book,  may  be  doubted ;  but  it  was  at  all  events  a 
singular  introduction  to  literature. 

Even  at  the  dame's  school,  where  he  received  his  first 
formal  instructions,  he  betrayed  his  passion  for  books,  and 
was  often  found  when  school  was  over,  in  the  above,favorite 
but  solemn  "  study  "  —  the  churchyard  —  engaged  in  soli- 
tary reading,  though  no  longer  poring  over  the  tombstones. 
He  pursued  the  same  extra-official  course  of  reading  at  his 
next  school,  which  was  kept  by  a  Mr.  Simmons,  at  a  village 
four  miles  from  Arnsby.  He  used  to  procure,  it  appears, 
from  his  father's  library,  books  for  these  play-hour  readings, 
and,  doubtless,  got  more  from  his  self-prompted  studies  than 
from  any  of  his  regular  lessons.  But  the  character  of  this 
"  select  library  for  the  young  "  may  well  surprise  us,  and,  if 
the  fact  were  not  well  authenticated,  his  choice  of  favorite 
authors  would  seem  incredible.  Jonathan  Edwards's  Trea- 
tise on  the  Freedom  of  the  Will,  and  Butler's  Analogy,  were, 
it  seems,  among  the  amusing  "  solatia  "  of  his  leisure  hours  ; 
and  Dr.  Gregory  assures  us  that  it  is  "  an  ascertained  fact," 
that  when  he  was  about  nine  or  ten,  he  had  read  and  re-read 
these  works  with  "  an  intense  interest."  Before  he  was  ten, 
another  incident  evinced  the  tendencies  of  his  mind  to  litera- 
ture ;  he  had  composed,  it  seems,  many  little  essays,  and 
13 


146  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

often  "  invited  his  brother  and  sisters  to  hear  him  preach." 
Similarly,  when  he  was  once  disposing  in  imagination  (as 
children  sometimes  will)  of  his  father's  "goods  and  chat- 
tels" before  the  worthy  man's  death,  he  willingly  agreed 
that  his  brother  should  have  "  the  cows,  sheep,  and  pigs," 
but  "  all  the  hooks  "  were  to  come  to  him. 

His  early  promise  of  eloquence,  conjoined  with  religious 
sensibility,  seemed  to  point  to  the  sacred  officfe ;  and,  in  fact, 
his  father  indulged  at  a  very  early  period  some  anticipations 
that  the  pulpit  was  his  destination.  At  eleven  he  was  re- 
moved to  a  school  at  Kettering,  where  the  same  brilliant 
talents  were  evinced,  but  not  very  wisely  developed.  His 
master,  flattered  by  having  such  a  prodigy,  sometimes  in- 
vited him  to  display  his  precocious  powers  of  oratory  before 
a  "  select  audience,"  —  a  folly  which  the  sound  judgment  of 
Robert  .Hall  loudly  and  justly  condemned  in  after-life. 
From  this  school  he  was  removed  to  another  of  greater 
note  at  Northampton,  kept  by  the  Rev.  John  Ryland,  a  man 
of  eccentric,  but  like  many  others  of  the  same  family,  of 
unusually  vigorous  intellect.  The  energy  of  Mr.  Ryland's 
character,  and  his  original  and  impressive  modes  of  teach- 
ing, seem  to  have  given  him  a  remarkable  ascendency  over 
the  minds  of  his  pupils,  —  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
Robert  Hall's  intellect  was  greatly  and  healthfully  stim- 
ulated under  his  judicious  training.  Here  he  remained 
about  a  year  and  a  half,  and  then,  having  decidedly  ex- 
pressed his  predilections  for  the  ministry,  and  pursued  some 
preparatory  theological  studies  under  his  father's  roof,  he 
repaired  to  the  Baptist  Academy  at  Bristol.  This  was  in 
1778,  when  only  in  his  fifteenth  year. 

During  his  stay  at  Bristol,  he  seems  to  have  made  rapid 
progress  in  all  the  studies  which  constituted  the  academic 
curriculum.  His  attention  to  the  principles  and  practice  of 
composition  was   very  marked  ;   though,  as    Dr.   Gregory 


ROBERT    HALL.  147 

observes,  the  few  remains  of  his  juvenile  compositions  ex- 
hibit "  more  of  the  tumultuary  flourish  of  the  orator  than 
he  would  have  approved  after  his  twentieth  year."  This  is 
a  common  case ;  for  a  severe  taste  is,  even  in  the  highest 
genius,  of  slow  growth,  though  in  Robert  Hall's  perhaps  as 
rapid  as  it  ever  was  in  any  man. 

His  dehut  as  a  public  speaker  gave  but  little  promise  of 
the  brilliant  career  which  awaited  him.  On  being  appointed 
to  deliver  an  address  (as  the  students  were  accustomed  to 
do  in  rotation)  at  the  vestry  of  Broadmead  Chapel,  he, 
after  a  brief  but  fluent  exordium  which  excited  the  expecta- 
tions of  his  auditors,  suddenly,  but  completely  lost  his  self- 
possession,  and  covering  his  face  in  an  agony  of  shame 
exclaimed,  "  Oh !  I  have  lost  all  my  ideas."  His  tutor, 
confident  (as  Sheridan  said  after  his  own  ignominious  first 
appearance)  that  it  was  i«  him,  and  determined^  as  was 
Sheridan,  that  it  should  come  otU  of  him,  appointed  him  to 
deliver  the  same  address  the  following  week ;  not  very 
judiciously,  perhaps,  considering  the  laws  of  association, 
and  how  apt  is  a  sensitive  mind,  like  a  spirited  horse,  to  shy 
and  falter  at  the  same  spot.  Sad  to  say,  he  again  failed, 
and  failed  completely.  Yet  the  incident  was  of  value  to 
him.  While  there  was  Uttle  fear  lest  a  transient  mortifi- 
cation like  this  should  permanently  depress  a  powerful 
mind,  fully  conscious  of  its  powers,  —  indeed,  such  minds 
are  generally  stimulated  rather  than  depressed  by  obsta- 
cles, —  it  had  a  salutary  effect  upon  his  moral  nature. 

In  relation  to  the  sacred  ofiice  he  seems  at  this  time,  as 
Dr.  Gregory  observes,  to  have  been  too  little  sensible  of  its 
higher  purposes,  and  too  ambitious  of  achieving  intellectual 
eminence;  perhaps  also  too  conscious  of  his  powers  to 
achieve  it.  Some  feeling  of  this  kind  is  indicated  by  his 
own  words,  uttered  after  his  second  failure,  —  "  If  this  does 
not  humble  me,  the  devil  must  have  me ! "  Many  other 
young  orators  who  have  afterwards  attained  eminence,  have 


148  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

encountered  similar  disasters  in  their  first  attempts.  The 
singularity  in  Robert  Hall's  case  is  that  he  had  not  been  har- 
dened to  self-possession  by  his  previous  juvenile  appearance 
before  those  "  select  audiences,"  which  his  injudicious  school- 
master had  so  early  taught  the  young  Roscius  to  confront. 

In  the  autumn  of  1781,  after  staying  three  years  at  the 
Academy,  he  went,  as  an  exhibitioner  under  Dr.  Ward's 
will,  to  King's  College,  Aberdeen,  where  he  remained  till 
178o.  Several  of  the  professors  were  men  of  note,  espec- 
ially Gerard  and  Leslie,  while  Marischal  College  could  boast 
of  the  prelections  of  Campbell  and  Beattie.  Hall  pursued 
his  studies  in  the  departments  of  classics,  philosophy,  and 
mathematics,  with  like  distinguished  success  ;  being  the  first 
man  of  his  year  in  all  the  classes.  But  the  great  charm  of 
his  residence  at  Aberdeen  was  the  society  of  Mackintosh, 
who,  though  a  year  younger,  had  entered  college  a  year 
earlier.  The  friendship  which  ensued,  and  which  only  death 
dissolved,  was  equally  beneficial  to  both  parties.  With  some 
points  of  dissimilarity  there  were  more  of  resemblance. 
The  instant  regards  of  Mackintosh,  according  to  his  own 
statement  to  Dr.  Gregory,  were  strongly  attracted  by  Hall's 
ingenuous  frankness  of  countenance,  the  mingled  vivacity 
and  sincerity  of  his  manner,  and  the  obvious  signs  of  great 
intellectual  vigor.  He  says  he  first  became  attached  to 
Hall  "  because  he  could  not  help  it."  But  daily  intercourse, 
in  which  they  studied  together  without  rivalry,  and  inces- 
santly disputed  without  anger,  —  a  true  test  of  genuine  at- 
tachment, —  cemented  their  first  casual  predilections  into  a 
lasting  friendship.  "  After  having  sharpened  their  weapons 
by  reading,  they  often  repaired  to  the  spacious  sands  upon 
the  sea-shore,  and  still  more  frequently  to  the  picturesque 
scenery  on  the  banks  of  the  Don,  above  the  old  town,  to 
discuss  with  eagerness  the  various  subjects  to  which  their 
attention  had  been  directed.  There  was  scarcely  an  impor- 
tant position  in  Berkley's  Minute  Philosopher,  in  Butler's 


ROBERT    HALL.  149 

Analogy,  or  in  Edwards  On  the  Will,  over  which  they  had 
not  thus  debated   with  the  utmost  intensity.     Night  after 
night,  nay,  month   after  month  for  two  sessions,  they  met 
only  to  study  or  to  dispute,  yet  no  unkindly  feeling  ensued. 
The  process  seemed  rather  —  like  blows  in  that  of  welding 
iron  —  to  knit  them  closer  together."  ^     Though  they  both, 
doubtless,  often  fought  for  victory,  they  yet  always  thought 
at  the  time  that  it  was  for  truth  ;  and  as  Sir  James  strikingly 
said :  "  Never,  so  far  as  he  could  then  judge,  did  either  make 
a  voluntary  sacrifice  of  truth,  or  stoop  to  draw  to  and  fro 
the  serra  Xoyo^iaxias  as  is  too  often  the  case  with  ordinary 
controvertists."     From  these  "  discussions,  and  from  subse- 
quent meditation   upon  them,"  Sir  James  declared  that  he 
had  "  learned  more  as  to  principles  than  from  all  the  books 
he  ever  read."     In  addition  to  their  discussions  over  Berk- 
ley, Edwards,  Butler,  and  other  philosophers,  they  read  large 
portions  of   the  best  Greek  authors  together  —  especially 
Plato.     Such   complete   intercommunion   of    minds    in  the 
same  studies — such  mutual  reflection  of  lights  and  constant 
collision   of   argument  —  must   have   been    of   incalculable 
benefit  to  both.     By  this  sort  of  student-partnership,  when, 
as  in  this  case,  minds  are  congenial,  the  results  of  reading 
may  be  more  than  doubled.     During  the  last  years  of  Hall's 
academic  course,  his  friend  was  no  longer  at  college,  and  his 
mind  sought  no  "  new  mate."     He  spent  the  time  in  solitary 
study,  and,  as   appears  by   his  own  confession,  was  much 
engaged  in  devotion  and  religious  meditation.     He  took  his 
degree  of  A.  M.  in  1785. 

The  six  months'  vacation  of  the  two  last  sessions  at  Aber- 
deen had  been  spent  in  assisting  Dr.  Evans  at  Broadmead 
Chapel,  Bristol.  He  now  formally  entered  on  the  office 
of  assistant-preacher,  and  about  the  same  time  was  appointed 
to  the  classical  tutorship  in  the  Imstol  Academy.     This  office, 

1  Gregory's  Memoir,  p.  15. 
13* 


150  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

assumed  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-one,  he  discharged  with 
great  credit  to  himself  and  benefit  to  his  pupils  for  more 
than  five  years.  igi 

Of  his  preaching  at  this  early  period,  an  interesting  ac- 
count is  given  by  Dr.  Gregory,  to  which  we  can  only  refer 
the  reader.  His  favorite  model  for  a  short  time  was  the 
original  but  eccentric  Robinson  of  Cambridge,  and,  fascinated 
with  his  manner,  he  resolved,  not  very  judiciously,  to  imitate 
it.  One  so  original  was  little  fitted  to  be  an  imitator  of  any- 
body, and  his  good  sense  soon  reclaimed  him  from  his  error. 
The  account  he  gave  to  Dr.  Gregory  of  the  mode  in  which 
he  was  cured  of  this  folly  is  characteristic.  "  I  was,"  he 
says,  "  too  proud  to  remain  an  imitator.  After  my  second 
trial,  as  I  was  walking  home,  I  heard  one  of  the  congrega- 
tion say  to  another,  *  Really  Mr.  Hall  did  remind  us  of  Mr. 
Robinson  ! '  That,  sir,  was  a  knock  down  blow  to  my  vanity ; 
and  I  at  once  resolved  that  if  ever  I  did  acquire  reputation 
it  should  be  my  own  reputation,  belong  to  my  own  character, 
and  not  be  that  of  a  likeness.  Besides,  sir,  if  I  had  not  been 
a  foolish  young  man,  I  should  have  seen  how  ridiculous  it 
was  to  imitate  such  a  preacher  as  Mr.  Robinson.  He  had 
a  musical  voice,  and  was  master  of  all  its  intonations.  He 
had  wonderful  self-possession,  and  could  say  what  he  pleased, 
when  he  pleased,  and  how  he  pleased ;  while  my  voice  and 
manner  were  naturally  bad  ;  and,  far  from  having  self-com- 
mand, I  never  entered  the  pulpit  without  omitting  to  say 
something  that  I  wished  to  say,  and  saying  something  that  I 
wished  unsaid  ;  and,  beside  all  this,  I  ought  to  have  known 
that  for  me  to  speak  slow  was  ruin.  '  Why  so ?  '  'I  won- 
der tliat  you,  a  student  of  philosophy,  should  ask  such  a 
question.  You  know,  sir,  that  force  or  momentum  is  con- 
jointly as  the  body  and  velocity ;  therefore,  as  my  voice  is 
feeble,  what  is  wanted  in  bbSy  must  be  made  up  in  velocity, 
or  there  will  not  be,  cannot  be,  any  impression.' " 

It  seems  that  he  some  time  afterwards  met  Robinson  in 


ROBERT    HALL.  151 

London,  and  young  as  he  was,  opposed  in  a  public  company 
some  of  the  heresies  which  Robinson  had  then  embraced. 
This  he  did  so  successfully  that  the  latter,  provoked  out  of 
his  temper  and  good  breeding,  spoke  with  disdain  of  "juve- 
nile defenders  of  the  faith."  Hall  was  tempted  to  reply 
that  "if  Ac  ever  rode  into  the  field  of  controversy  he  would 
at  least  not  borrow  Dr.  Abbadie's  boots,"  —  a  sarcasm  in 
which  there  was  a  double  sting,  inasmuch  as  Robinson  had 
at  this  time  abandoned  the  very  views  which  he  had  once 
"  borrowed  "  Abbadie's  arguments  to  defend. 

An  unhappy  nlisunderstanding  with  his  colleague  in  1789, 
and  which  threatened  the  peace  of  the  church  at  Broad- 
mead,  led  to  Hall's  leaving  Bristol.  Before  the  close  of  his 
connection  with  that  congregation,  suspicions  of  heterodoxy 
on  some  points  had  been  excited  ;  and  in  reply  to  certain 
inquiries  he  gave  a  frank  and  explicit  statement  of  his 
views.  To  one  or  two  singularities  of  opinion,  which  he 
afterwards  abandoned,  he  pleaded  guilty.  He  avows  he  was 
at  this  time  a  "  materialist,"  but  declares  that  his  sentiments 
did  not  affect  his  theology,  and  that  he  wished  his  material- 
ism "  to  be  considered  a  mere  metaphysical  speculation."  It 
may  be  observed  that  in  the  same  document,  in  which  he 
fully  avows  his  belief  in  the  divinity  of  Christ,  he  makes  no 
mention  of  his  belief  in  the  personality  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
—  a  doctrine  of  which  at  this  time  he  was  not  convinced. 
His  materialism  he  altogether  abandoned  in  1790  ;  to  the 
ordinary  Trinitarian  views  he  did  not  give  his  unqualified 
adhesion  till  some  years  later  (1800). 

From  Bristol  Mr.  Hall  went  (1790)  to  Cambridge,  to  the 
congregation  over  which  Robinson  formerly  presided.  After 
a  twelve-month's  trial  of  the  place,  he  was  invited  to  the 
pastorate,  and  accepted  it.  As  no  small  portion  of  the  con- 
gregation had  been  in  various  degrees  infected  with  the 
errors  of  their  former  minister,  it  has  been  well  conjectured 
by  Dr.  Gregory  that  the  very  immaturity  of  Hall's  senti- 


152  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ments  on  certain  points  was  an  advantage  rather  than  other- 
wise. They  listened  to  him  when  they  wmald  not  have  lis- 
tened to  a  man  of  more  strongly  marked  orthodoxy.  As 
Hall  gradually  approximated  to  the  sentiments  generally 
held  by  his  co-religionists,  he  led  his  congregation  with  him  ; 
and  at  length,  by  the  force  of  his  preaching,  the  influence  of 
his  splendid  reputation,  and  the  still  better  influence  of  his 
persuasive  life  and  character,  overcame  all  opposition  to  his 
ministry,  and  thoroughly  weeded  out  the  errors  that  had  in- 
fested his  flock. 

In  1793  he  published  his  celebrated  Apology  for  the  Free- 
dom of  the  Press.  The  account  of  its  origin  is  amusing. 
It  seems  that  on  this  occasion  he  was  "importuned  into  con- 
troversy," which,  in  spite  of  his  unrivalled  polemical  powers, 
he  ever  avoided  if  possible.  "  And  so,  in  an  evil  hour," 
says  he,  "  I  yielded.  I  went  home  to  my  lodgings  and  began 
to  write  immediately  ;  sat  up  all  night ;  and,  wonderful  for 
me,  kept  up  the  intellectual  ferment  for  almost  a  month  ; 
and  then  the  thing  was  done.  I  revised  it  a  little  as  it  went 
through  the  press,  but  I  have  ever  since  regretted  that  I 
wrote  so  hastily  and  supei'ficially  upon  some  subjects 
brought  forward,  which  required  touching  with  a  master- 
hand,  and  exploring  to  their  very  foundations."  The  esti- 
mate he  formed  of  the  production  was,  it  must  be  confessed, 
sufficiently  modest;  for,  as  an  exhibition  of  intellectual 
vigor,  it  is  certainly  equal  to  almost  any  thing  he  ever  pro- 
duced. It  may  be  conjectured,  indeed,  from  the  more  cau- 
tious political  tone  of  his  later  publications,  and  the  far  dif- 
ferent terms  in  which,  like  his  friend  Sir  James,  he  learned 
to'  speak  of  the  French  Revolution,  that,  had  he  written  at  a 
later  period,  he  would  have  modified  some  of  his  statements, 
though  he  always  declared  his  adhesion  to  the  "  essential 
principles "  asserted.  The  reasons  he  assigns  in  the  above 
extract,  but,  still  more,  his  ingenuously  expressed  regret  for 
the  "  asperities  "  in  which  he  had  occasionally  indulged  in 


ROBERT    HALL.  153 

this  piece,  would  not  permit  him  in  his  later  years  to  consent 
to  its  republication,  till  the  booksellers  left  him  no  alterna- 
tive. An  earlier  tract,  entitled  Christianity  Consistent  with 
the  Love  of  Freedom,  was  impudently  pirated,  on  paper 
which  bore  the  watermark  of  1818,  with  a  title-page  which 
bore  the  year  1791 !  It  was,  as  Dr.  Gregory  says,  "  a  very 
skilful  imitation  in  paper,  type,  and  date." 

An  anecdote  here  may  be  worth  relating,  as  showing  how 
completely  at  this  time  he  had  resiled  from  Socinianism, 
into  which  it  had  been  once  suspected  he  was  fast  lapsing. 
His  spirited  eulogium  on  Dr.  Priestley  rekindled  the  hopes  of 
some  of  that  gentleman's  partisans,  and  rendered  on  some 
occasions  Mr.  Hall's  "  denial "  of  any  of  the  imputed  ten- 
dencies "  imperative."  "  On  one  of  these  occasions,"  says 
Dr.  Gregory,  "  Mr.  Hall  having  in  his  usual  terms  panegyr- 
ized Dr.  Priestley,  a  gentleman  who  held  the  doctor's  theo- 
logical opinions,  tapping  Mr.  Hall  upon  the  shoulder,  said, 
'Oh!  sir,  we  shaj|^have  you  among  us  soon  1  see.'  Mr. 
Hall,  startled  and  offended  by  the  rude  tone  of  exultation  in 
which  this  was  uttered,  hastily  replied,  '  Me  amongst  you, 
sir !  Me  amongst  you !  Why,  if  that  were  the  case,  I 
should  deserve  to  be  tied  to  the  tail  of  the  great  red  dragon, 
and  whipped  round  the  nethermost  regions  to  all  eternity.' " 

In  1801  appeared  one  of  the  most  eloquent  and  original 
of  all  his  productions  —  the  sermon  on  Modern  Infidelity. 
A  curious  account  of  its  preparation  for  the  press  is  given  by 
Dr.  Gregory.  Like  most  of  Hall's  sermons,  it  was  deliv- 
ered almost  entirely  unwritten,  though  the  matter,  of  course, 
had  been  profoundly  meditated.  The  torture  to  which  com- 
position exposed  him  from  the  mysterious  disease  in  his  back, 
quite  indisposed  the  preacher  to  undertake  the  labor  of  pre- 
paring the  sermon  for  the  press.  It  was  therefore  procured 
in  fragments  from  his  dictation  as  he  lay  on  the  floor  (a  few 
paragraphs  or  pages  at  a  time),  and  passed  through  the  press, 
as  his  biographer  assures  us,  without  the  author's  having 


154  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

seen  a  line  of  it.  Of  its  merits  it  is  superfluous  to  speak  ; 
as  a  luminous  defence  of  some  of  the  first  principles  of  all 
religion,  and  a  philosophical  expose  of  the  anti-social  tenden- 
cies of  infidelity,  it  has  never  been  surpassed.  It  raised 
Hall's  reputation  to  the  highest  pitch  ;  excited  the  admiration 
of  men  of  all  ranks  and  opinions  ;  conciliated  ,the  esteem  of 
those  who  had  been  offended  with  the  Apology ;  crowded 
his  chapel  with  throngs  of  university  students;  and,  per- 
haps a  still  better  proof  of  its  success,  exposed  him  to  the 
rabid  attacks  of  Atheism  and  its  champions. 

Two  other  discourses  of  surpassing  excellence  appeared 
in  the  course  of  the  great  struggle  with  France.  One  was 
entitled  Rejlections  on  War,  preached  on  occasion  of  the 
"general  thanksgiving"  at  the  transient  peace  of  Amiens, 
(1802).  This,  as  Dr.  Gregory  surmises,  was  the  only  ser- 
mon Hall  ever  delivered  memoriter,  and  the  embarrassment 
he  felt  in  some  passages  was  sufficient  to  prevent  him  from 
ever  repeating  the  attempt.  The  other  H/l^  delivered  on  the 
renewal  of  the  war  (1803),  and  was  entitled.  Sentiments 
proper  to  the  present  Crisis.  In  spite  of  one  or  two  rhet- 
orical flights,  scarcely  admissible  in  a  Christian  pulpit,  it 
is  deservedly  considered  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  effu- 
sions of  his  eloquence. 

During  the  latter  years  of  his  residence  at  Cambridge 
this  powerful  and  brilliant  mind  was  raoi-e  than  once  tran- 
siently eclipsed.  These  accesses  of  mental  disease  were 
doubtless- attributable  to  many  causes;  partly  to  solitude, 
partly  to  excessive  study,  partly  to  the  severe  and  harassing 
suffering  in  his  back  and  the  sleepless  nights  which  it  occa- 
sioned, partly  to  severe  disappointment,  but  principally,  no 
doubt,  to  that  which  exacerbated  all  other  causes  of  mis- 
chief—  the  exquisitely  strung  and  sensitive  mind  which  is 
too  often,  as  Dryden  long  ago  observed, 

■ "  to  madness  near  allied, 


And  thin  partitions  do  their  bounds  divide." 


BOBERT    HALL.  155 

Just  before  his  first  attack  (Nov.  1804),  his  severe  sufferings 
from  his  old  complaint  induced  his  medical  advisers  to  rec- 
ommend his  living  a  few  miles  from  Cambridge,  and  using 
horse  exercise.  Equestrian  exercise  would  seem  a  question- 
able remedy,  considering  the  local  symptoms  of  his  myste- 
rious disease,,  though  country  air  might  doubtless  be  bene- 
ficial. But  whatever  advantage  this  might  secure  was  more 
than  counterbalanced,  it  is  to  be  feared,  by  the  solitude  to 
which  his  secluded  residence  doomed  him,  and  which  proba- 
bly much  contributed  to  his  mental  attack.  The  retreat 
chosen  for  him  was  at  Shelford,  four  miles  from  Cambridge. 
There  he  was  engaged  in  solitary  study  and  meditation  dur- 
ing the  whole  day,  and  often  deep  into  the  night.  Tlie  first 
melancholy  attack  took  place  in  November,  1804. 

To  the  delight  of  his  congregation,  who  had  proved,  by 
their  provident  care  of  him,  their  attachment  to  his  minis- 
try, he  was  able  to  resume  his  public  functions  in  April, 
.1805.  As  it  wa#  feared  that  the  associations  of  Shelford 
might  prove  prejudicial,  he  was  recommended  to  change  his 
residence,  and  most  injudiciously,  as  it  seems  to  us,  he  was 
again  advised  to  reside  in  a  remote  village.  He  took  a 
house  at  Foulmire,  nine  miles  from  Cambridge.  Solitude 
once  more  proved  his  bane,  and  another  attack  soon  super- 
vened. After  a  year  spent  under  judicious  medical  care  at 
Bristol,  he  recovered  sufficiently  to  engage  in  occasional 
village  preaching,  and  to  apply  moderately  to  study.  But 
it  was  thought  prudent  that  he  should  quit  Cambridge  alto- 
gether, and  he  accordingly  sent  in  his  resignation. 

Mr.  Hall  spent  about  fifteen  years  at  Cambridge.  Of 
his  residence  there  —  his  studies,  his  modes  of  preparation 
for  the  pulpit,  his  social  habits  —  an  interesting  account  will 
be  found  in  Dr.  Gregory's  Memoir,  to  which  only  a  refer- 
ence can  here  be  made.  His  biographer  naturally  dWills 
with  partial  minuteness  on  this  period  of  Hall's  history,  as 
that  in  which   he  became   intimate  with  him,  and  enjoyed 


156  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

unrestricted  daily  intercourse.  It  was  that  period,  also,  in 
which  Mr.  Hall  achieved  his  great  public  reputation,  and 
produced  his  most  brilliant,  if  not  his  most  useful,  publica- 
tions. 

Leicester  was  the  next  scene  of  Hall's  labors,  whither  he 
removed  in  the  year  1806,  and  where  he  resided  nearly 
twenty  years,  longer  by  some  years  than  at  any  other  place. 
In  the  limits  of  this  brief  article  there  is  no  space  for  de- 
tails, nor  is  it  necessary.  He  lived  as  retired  as  his  reputa- 
tion would  allow  him  to  be.  If  fame  came,  it  came  un- 
sought ;  if  the  world  intruded  upon  him,  as  it  often  did, 
and  often  inconveniently,  he  gave  it  a  courteous  welcome, 
but  was  still  better  pleased  when  it  left  him  to  his  studies 
and  his  flock.  But  much  as  he  loved  privacy,  privacy  for 
him  was  no  longer  solitude ;  in  1808,  after  a  somewhat  sin- 
gular courtship,  he  married,  and,  as  it  turned  out,  most  hap- 

This  event  largely  contributed  to  his^^velfare ;  and  it  is. 
observable  that  no  symptoms  of  mental  disease  afterwards 
appeared.  In  relation  to  what  he  himself  would  consider 
the  great  purpose  of  his  life,  —  the  successful  prosecution 
of  his  ministry,  —  the  years  spent  at  Leicester  were  the 
best  of  his  life.  However  obscure  might  seem  his  lot,  it 
was  yet  most  happy ;  for  he  was  eminently  useful,  and  uni- 
versally beloved.  His  chapel  was  twice  enlarged  to  accom- 
modate the  increasing  crowds  who  thronged  to  hear  him. 
Occupying  a  central  spot  in  the  kingdom,  he  was  frequently 
importuned  to  preach,  on  public  occasions,  in  all  directions 
of  the  compass ;  and,  so  far  as  his  incessant  and  painful 
maladies  permitted,  he  complied  with  such  requests  un- 
grudgingly. From  time  to  time,  and  quite  as  frequently  as 
the  same  physical  infirmities  allowed,  he  also  gave  the  pub- 
BiSlhe  benefit  of  his  pen.  Besides  several  reviews,  tracts, 
and  other  pieces,  he  published,  during  his  residence  at 
Leicester,  some  of  his  most  celebrated  sermons ;    two  of 


ROBERT    HALL.  157 

them  —  on  the  Discouragements  and  Supports  of  the  Chris- 
tian Minister,  and  on  the  lamented  Death  of  the  Princess 
Charlotte  —  are  among  the  most  striking  efforts  of  his  elo- 
quence. He  here  also  published  the  largest,  and  in  some 
respects  most  valuable  of  his  writings  —  those  on  the  Terms 
of  Communion.  These  treatises  are  equally  distinguished 
by  acuteness  of  logic  and  catholicity  of  sentiment.  It  has 
been  sometimes  lamented  that  he  should  not  have  given  his 
consummate  logical  powers  a  more  ample  theme.  But,  in 
fact,  his  genius  has  made  the  thenre  ampler  than  it  seems. 
Not  only  have  these  pieces  exerted  a  wide  influence  in 
liberalizing  the  opinions  and  practice  of  his  own  denomina- 
tion, but  they  abound  in  reasoning  and  sentiments  of  practi- 
cal application  to  every  church  in  Christendom,  and  cannot 
be  read  by  any  thoughtful  Christian  without  making  him 
feel  something  of  that  noble  expansion  of  soul  Avhich  ani- 
mated their  author ;  without  making  him  sigh  for  the  day, 
when  "  every  middle  wall  of  partition  "  which  jealous  big- 
otry has  interposed  to  the  intercommunion  of  those  who 
reciprocally  acknowledge  each  other  to  be  Christians,  may 
be  "  broken  down." 

On  Dr.  Ryland's  death  (1825),  Mr.  Hall  was  invited  to 
Bristol,  and,  after  a  severe  struggle,  consented.  It  is 
scarcely  a  figure  to  say  that  he  tore  himself  away  from  his 
congregation  at  Leicester.  On  the  last  occasion  of  cele- 
brating the  Lord's  Supper,  he  sat  down,  overcome  with  his 
emotions,  and,  covering  his  face  with  his  hands,  "  wept 
aloud."  To  see  the  "  strong  man  thus  bowed,"  dissolved  the 
people  also  in  tears,  —  and  so  they  parted ;  his  flock,  as  the 
Ephesian  elders  from  Paul,  "  sorrowing  most  of  all  for 
the  words  that  he  spake,  that  they  shoyld  see  his  face  no 
more."  « 

Mr.  Hall  was  in  his  sixty-second  year  when  he  removed 
to  Bristol,  and  it  was  his  last  change ;  thus  terminating  his 
labors  where  he  began  them.     He  was  fast  approaching  the 

14 


158  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

close  of  his  cax-eer.  The  mysterious  and  intractable  malady 
which  had  so  long  tormented  him,  which  had  rendered  his 
days  and  nights  so  "  wearisome,"  became  more  urgent,  and 
doses  of  opium  almost  fabulous  produced  little  effect.  The 
indirect  elFects  of  his  complaint,  —  forbidding  exercise,  induc- 
ing plethora,  and  impeding  the  circulation,  —  produced  that 
diseased  condition  of  the  heart  which  was  the  immediate 
cause  of  his  death.  The  close  of  his  life  was  a  scene  of 
frightful  tortures,  the  sum  of  which,  added  to  the  almost 
constant  pain  in  which  his  life  was  passed,  must  have  been 
tantamount  to  many  martyrdoms.  The  pages  in  Dr.  Greg- 
ory's Life  which  depict  his  last  sufferings,  and  the  tri- 
umph of  patience  over  them,  form  some  of  the  most  sor- 
rowful, and  yet  also  some  of  the  brightest,  in  the  records  of 
Christian  biography.  Deep  were  the  clouds  which  gathered 
round  his  sunset,  but  they  were  all  penetrated  and  trans- 
figured by  the  glory  of  the  descending  luminary  ;  and  even 
he  who  doubts  whether  Christianity  be  true,  can  surely 
hardly  read  the  closing  scenes  of  this  great  and  good  man's 
life  without  feeling,  that  since  humanity  is  thus  subject  to 
suffering,  it  is  much  to  have  such  consolations.  His  death 
took  place  February  21,  1831.  After  detailing  the  appear- 
ances presented  by  thejoo*^  mortem  examination,  the  eminent 
physician,  Dr.  liichard,  adds,  —  "  Probably  no  man  ever 
went  through  more  physical  suffering  than  Mr.  Hall;  he 
was  a  fine  example  of  the  triumph  of  the  higher  powers  of 
mind,  exalted  by  religion,  over  the  infirmities  of  the  body. 
His  loss  will  long  be  felt  in  this  place,  not  only  by  persons 
of  his  own  communion,  but  by  all  that  have  any  esteem  for 
what  is  truly  great  and  good." 

The  mind  of  Robert  Hall  was  of  that  select  order  which 
arc  equally  distinguished  by  power  and  symmetry  ;  where 
each  single  faculty  is  of  imposing  dimensions,  yet  none  out 
of  proportion  to  the  rest.  His*intellect  was  eminently  acute 
and   comprehensive ;    his   imagination    prompt,   vivid,   and 


ROBERT    HALL.  159 

affluent.  This  latter  faculty,  indeed,  was  not  so  exuber- 
ant (as  Foster  justly  remarks)  as  that  of  a  Burke  or  a 
Jeremy  Taylor  ;  nor  could  it  have  been  so,  without  marring 
the  harmony  just  mentioned.  His  reasoning  was  close  as 
that  of  almost  any  controvertist  of  any  age,  but  expressed  in 
all  the  charms  of  a  most  chaste  and  polished  style ;  —  severe 
logic  clothed  in  the  most  tasteful  rhetoric.  His  talents  for 
the  successful  prosecution  of  abstract  science,  —  especially 
metaphysical  and  ethical  —  were  of  a  very  high  order  ;  but 
they  were  conjoined  with  strong  practical  sense,  keen  pow- 
ers of  observation,  and  a  vivid  sensibility.  His  memory 
was  tenacious,  and  his  aptitudes  for  the  acquisition  of  knowl- 
edge, generally,  far  beyond  the  ordinary  measure  ;  but  in 
him  as  in  all  very  vigorous  minds,  diversified  knowledge  was 
but  the  material  and  aliment  of  original  thought,  and  was 
subordinated  to  that  wisdom  which  insists  that  it  shall  be 
the  handmaid,  not  the  mistress  of  intellect.  His  sense  of  the 
beautiful  and  the  ludicrous  seemed  nearly  equally  vivid;  and 
graceful  imagery  and  pointed  wit  animated  alike  his  writings 
and  his  conversation.  His  style  is  the  very  impress  of  all 
this  amplitude  and  variety  of  endowments.  It  is  masculine 
and  compact,  for  a  robust  logic  and  strong  sense  form  the 
basis  of  it ;  energetic  and  vivacious,  for  it  is  animated  by 
imagination  and  sensibility  ;  polished  and  elegant,  for  taste, 
exquisite,  sometimes  even  to  a  morbid  fastidiousness,  pre- 
sided over  it. 

On  the  whole,  minds  of  greater  powers  in  several  given 
directions,  or  of  more  absolute  originality  in  some  one,  may 
be  readily  pointed  out ;  some  too  more  strongly  character- 
ized either  by  rugged  strength  or  imaginative  exuberance  ; 
but  seldom  indeed  has  a  mind  appeared  so  variously  dow- 
ered with  all  the  choicest  gifts  of  strength  and  grace  in 
happy  unison. 

It  has  been  well  said  of  his  style  by  a  critic  in  the  Quar- 
terly Review,  that  it  is  "  constructed  after  no  model ;  it  is 


160  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

more  massive  than  Addison's,  more  easy  and  unconstrained 
than  Johnson's,  more  sober  than  Burke's."  This  is,  in  fact, 
one  of  its  surpassing  excellences  ;  it  is  eminently  beautiful, 
but  for  that  reason  has  no  predominant  featui-es  ;  it  is  the 
just  image  of  the  happy  conjunction  and  equilibrium  of  the 
author's  powers  ;  —  music  in  which  no  excess  in  any  of  the 
parts  mars  the  harmony. 

If  his  more  elaborate  productions  have  a  fault  at  all,  it  is 
the  result  of  that  very  sensitiveness  of  taste  to  which  refer- 
ence has  been  made.  In  polishing  to  an  extreme  of  fastidi- 
ous elegance,  he  has  perhaps  here  and  there  pared  away  a 
little  of  the  energy  of  his  style.  For  this  reason  it  has  even 
been  conjectured  that  some  of  his  strictly  extemporaneous 
effusions,  —  extemporaneous  as  to  the  language,  —  to  which 
he  gave  utterance  in  the  all  but  preternatural  dilation  of 
mind,  which  sometimes  characterized  his  eloquence  in  its 
prime,  transcended  in  force  and  beauty  his  most  deliberate 
compositions,  produced  as  these  always  were  amidst  bodily 
sufferings  little  favorable  to  the  free  action  of  his  faculties. 
In  truth,  his  extemporaneous  command  of  all  the  resources 
of  language  (equally  seen  in  the  pulpit  and  in  conversation) 
was  one  of  his  most  extraordinary  endowments,  and  per- 
haps to  the  degree  in  which  he  possessed  it,  almost  unique. 
Some  may  have  been  as  copious  in  their  diction,  others  as 
pi'ecise ;  but  he  conjoined  both  excellences  in  equal  meas- 
ure, and  added  to  them,  what  is  more  rare,  an  astonishing 
command  of  construction  ;  so  that  he  could  throw  the  rapid 
and  soluble  words,  which  seemed  to  come  at  will,  into  the 
most  apt  and  elegant  collocations. 

This  singular  gift  of  extemporaneous  speech  put  the  cope- 
stone  on  all  his  other  excellences  as  an  orator.  The  gen- 
eral structure  of  his  mind,  his  robust  reasoning  faculties,  his 
vigorous  though  ever  ministering  imagination,  his  keen  sen- 
sibility, and  his  vehement  passions,  pointed  in  the  same 
direction,  and  fitted  him  to  be  a  great  public  speaker.-    Such 


EGBERT    HALL.  161 

he  would  have  become  under  any  circumstances  ;  but  it  was 
his  rare  gift  of  extemporaneous  language  which  enabled  him 
to  combine  the  immense  advantage  of  unwritten  composition 
with  a  freedom  from  all  its  usual  defects  ;  to  clothe,  not  ex- 
temporaneous thoughts  indeed,  —  on  which  no  man  should 
reckon,  though  after  careful  preparation  such  thoughts  may 
come  unbidden,  —  but  carefully  meditated  matters,  in  all 
the  graces  of  the  most  eloquent  language.  His  usual  mode 
of  preparation  for  the  pulpit  is  thus  described  by  Dr.  Greg- 
ory :  —  "  The  grand  divisions  of  thought  —  the  heads  of  a 
sermon  for  example  —  he  would  trace  out  with  the  most 
prominent  lines  of  demarcation ;  and  these,  for  some  years, 
supplied  all  the  hints  that  he  needed  in  the  pulpit,  except  on 
extraordinary  occasions.  To  these  grand  divisions  he  re- 
ferred, and  upon  them  suspended  all  the  subordinate  trains 
of  thought.  The  latter,  again,  appear  to  have  been  of  two 
classes,  altogether  distinct ;  outline  trains  of  thought,  and 
trains  into  which  much  of  the  detail  was  interwoven.  In 
the  outline  train  the  whole  plan  was  carried  out  and  com- 
pleted as  to  the  argument ;  in  that  of  detail  the  illustrations, 
images,  and  subordinate  proofs  were  selected  and  classified  ; 
and  in  those  instances  where  the  force  of  an  argument  or  the 
probable  success  of  a  general  application  would  mainly  de- 
pend upon  the  language,  even  that  was  selected  and  appro- 
priated, sometimes  to  the  precise  collocation  of  the  words. 
Of  some  sermons,  no  portions  whatever  were  wrought  out 
thus  minutely ;  the  language  employed  in  preaching  being 
that  which  spontaneously  occurred  at  the  time ;  of  others, 
this  minute  attention  was  paid  to  the  verbal  structure  of 
nearly  half;  of  a  few,  the  entire  train  of  preparation,  almost 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  extended  to  the  very  sen- 
tences. Yet  the  marked  peculiarity  consisted  in  this,  that  the 
process,  even  when  thus  directed  to  minutiae  in  his  more 
elaborate  efforts,  did  not  require  the  use  of  the  pen,  at  least 
at  the  time  to  which  -these  remarks  principally  apply." 
14* 


162  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

So  perfect  was  the  form  in  which  he  could  give  expression 
to  a  train  of  thought,  that  (as  already  intimated)  it  may 
ev'en  be  surmised  that  his  spoken  style  often  surpassed,  in 
all  the  essential  excellences  of  eloquence,  that  of  the  most 
admired  and  elaborate  of  his  published  discourses  ;  the  for- 
mer having  all  the  advantages  of  a  more  idiomatic  diction 
and  more  colloquial  construction,  yet  without  the  sacrifice  of 
the  precision  and  elegance  which  distinguish  the  latter.  His 
frequent  paroxysms  of  pain  must  at  all  events  have  tended 
continually  to  distract  his  mind,  and  diminished  the  giovv  of 
feeling  when  in  the  act  of  composition  ;  and  hence  the  ex- 
treme reluctance  with  which  he  undertook  the  task.  On  the 
other  hand,  under  the  excitement  of  public  speaking,  the 
consciousness  of  painful  sensations  was  less  vivid,  and  some- 
times vanished,  as  appears  from  one  of  his  own  curious  but 
most  sad  confessions.  He  tells  us  that  he  did  not  know  that 
he  was  ever  perfectly  free  from  the  consciousness  of  distress- 
ing sensations  in  his  back,  except  now  and  then  for  a  few 
moments  in  the  pulpit. 

The  same  felicities  of  extemporaneous  speech  which 
marked  his  pulpit  efforts  were  observable  in  private.  His 
conversation  possessed  a  vivacity,  affluence,  and  elegance 
very  rarely  equalled.  His  repartees  were  particularly 
happy,  and,  as  has  been  well  remarked,  strongly  remind  one 
of  the  manner  of  Johnson.  Some  of  the  pungent  sayings, 
full  of  mingled  wit  and  wisdom,  which  Dr.  Gregory  has 
recorded,  make  one  regret  that  some  Boswell  was  not  always 
at  hand  to  preserve  those  brilliant  but  evanescent  effusions 
of  his  genius. 

Many  have  lamented  that  he  did  so  little  (compared  with 
some  otlier  men)  by  his  pen.  In  truth,  however,  consider- 
ing his  constant  sufferings  and  the  dreadful  toil  which  com- 
position imposed  upon  him,  his  six  octavos  entitled  him  to 
be  considered  even  a  voluminous  writer. 

Though,  like  most  other  men  of  powerful  minds,  he  was 


ROBERT   HALL.  163 

fonder  of  thinking  than  reading,  his  acquisitions  were  vari- 
ous, and,  in  several  branches  of  study,  profound.  It  may 
be  added  that  his  ardor  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  followed 
him  to  the  last,  of  which  Dr.  Gregory  give^us  a  singular 
example.  He  says  that  he  found  him  one  morning,  in  the 
closing  years  of  his  life,  lying  on  the  floor  with  an  Italian 
grammar  and  dictionary,  deep  in  the  study  of  that  language. 
To  this  he  had  been  stimulated  by  an  article  in  the  Ediii- 
hurgh  Review,  in  which  an  elaborate  parallel  had  been  insti- 
tuted between  the  genius  of  Dante  and  that  of  Milton. 
With  this  critique  he  had  been,  he  said,  much  delighted,  and 
Vished  to  judge  for  himself  of  the  accuracy  of  the  views 
propounded.  Among  the  many  triumphs  achieved  by  Mr. 
Macaulay's  genius,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  was  ever 
more  signal  than  that  nearly  his  first  Essay  induced  a  mind 
like  that  of  Robert  Hall  to  study  a  new  language  at  the  age 
of  threescore,  just  to  verify  the  justice  of  the  criticisms. 

It  has  been  justly  remarked  by  Mr.  Foster,  in  his  admi- 
rable critique  on  Robert  Hall  as  a  "  preacher  "  (well  worthy 
of  universal  perusal),  that  his  eloquence  in  later  years  lost 
somewhat  of  the  fire  which  characterized  the  oratory  of  his 
youth  and  manhood.  But  what  was  lost  in  this  respect  was 
gained  in  tenderness  and  pathos,  in  elevation  of  Christian 
sentiment  and  depth  of  Christian  feeling. 

It  is  the  crowning  glory  of  Robert  Hall  that  all  his  great 
powers  were  consecrated  to  the  noblest  purposes ;  sub- 
ordinated to  objects  better  worth  living  for  than  intel- 
lectual power  or  intellectual  fame.  His  sacred  ambition 
was  for  the  formation,  in  himself  and  others,  of  the  Chris- 
tian character.  To  moral  self-culture  he  sought,  as  all 
ought  to  do,  but  so  few  really  do,  to  consecrate  every  en- 
dowment of  his  intellect.  Of  the  possession  of  high  powers 
he  could  not  but  be  conscious  ;  and  of  the  temptations  they 
involved  he  was  also  profoundly  sensible.     His  life   shows 


164  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

US  that  he  had  learned  how  to  make  them  keep  their 
place.  Naturally  impetuous,  impatient,  choleric,  he  sed- 
ulously watched  over  these  infirmities  in  temper,  and  be- 
came remarkable  for  humility  and  simplicity ;  full  of  ambi- 
tion, he  submitted  to  cast  down  "  every  proud  imagination  ; " 
in  his  youth  fiery  and  pugnacious,  he  learned  in  his  later 
years  to  hate  controversy,  and  exercised  in  an  eminent  degree 
that  charity  toward  all  good  men  of  all  parties,  which  made 
him  say  in  one  of  his  sermons,  "  He  who  is  good  enough  for 
Christ  is  good  enough  for  me."  In  his  manners  he  was  as 
unsophisticated  as  a  child,  and  in  his  conduct  full  of  gener- 
osity and  benevolence.  His  patience  and  fortitude  were* 
eminently  displayed  in  the  uncomplaining  endurance  of 
those  frightful  sufferings  which  made  his  life  a  perpetual 
martyrdom ;  while  his  faith  and  humility  were  evinced  no 
less  in  his  admission  that  none  of  these  pangs  could  have 
been  spared.  It  has  been  well  said  by  a  writer  in  the 
Quarterly  Review,  "  It  is  impossible  to  read  the  works  of 
this  extraordinary  man  without  perceiving  that  his  passions 
in  his  youth  were  turbulent  in  the  extreme  —  that  the  ener- 
gies of  his  mind  were  then  scarcely  under  his  own  control  — 
that  years  of  reflection  and  dear  bought  experience  were 
wanting  to  him,  above  all  men,  in  order  to  tame  his  spirit  — 
that,  like  Milton's  lion,  he  was  a  long  time  before  he  could 
struggle  out  of  earth."  "  I  presume,"  says  he,  in  one  of  his 
letters,  "  the  Lord  sees  I  require  more  hammering  and 
hewing  than  almost  any  other  stone  that  was  ever  selected 
for  his  spiritual  building,  and  that  is  the  secret  of  his  deal- 
ing with  me."  In  a  word,  he  exhibited  the  traits  of  a  gen- 
uine Christian  —  his  character  shining  with  a  more  lustrous 
light  as  he  advanced  in  years,  "growing  brighter  and 
brighter  to  the  perfect  day." 

The  character  to  which  he  chiefly  aspired  himself,  he  was 
equally  anxious  to  aid  in  forming  in  his  fellow  men,  and  to 


ROBERT   HALL.  165 

this  consecrated  his  genius  as  an  object  well  worthy  of  it. 
Hence  his  contentment  with  a  lot  far  more  obscure  than  he 
could  easily  have  attained  in  any  department  of  secular  life ; 
and  hence,  with  Paul,  he  accoutred  it  his  chief  glory  to  be  a 
"  Christian  minister." 


SIR  JOHN  FRANKLIN. 


Sir  John  Franklin,  Rear-Admiral  of  the  Blue,  was 
a  native  of  Spilsby,  in  Lincolnshire.  Sprung  from  a  line  of 
freeholders,  or  "  Franklins,"  his  father  inherited  a  small 
family  estate,  which  was  so  deeply  mortgaged  by  his  im- 
mediate predecessor  that  it  was  found  necessary  to  sell  it ; 
but  by  his  success  in  commercial  j)ursuits  he  was  enabled  to 
maintain  and  educate  a  family  of  twelve  children,  of  whom 
one  only  died  in  infancy.  The  fortunes  of  his  four  sons 
were  remarkable,  unaided  as  they  were  by  patronage  or 
great  connections.  Thomas,  the  eldest,  following  the  pur- 
suits of  his  fathex",  acquired  the  local  reputation  of  an  acute 
and  highly  honorable  man  of  business,  whose  intellect  gave 
him  much  influence  with  his  neighbors,  and  in  a  time  of 
threatened  invasion,  he  was  mainly  instrumental  in  raising 
a  body  of  yeomanry  cavalry,  in  which  he  did  the  duty  of 
adjutant,  and  was  afterwards  chosen  to  be  lieutenant-colonel 
of  a  regiment  of  volunteer  infantry.  The  second  son.  Sir 
Willingham,  educated  at  Westminster,  was  elected  to  a 
scholarship  of  Christ's  Church,  Oxford,  and  after  gaining 
an  Oriel  fellowship,  was  called  to  the  bar,  and  died  a  judge 
fl,t  Madras.  James,  the  third  son,  having,  as  cadet,  exhibited 
great  proficiency  in  Ilindostanee  and  Persian,  was  presented 
by  the  India  Company  with  a  handsome  sword,  £50  in 
money,  and  a  cornetcy  in  the  First  Bengal  Native  Cavalry, 

(166) 


SIR  JOHN   FKANKLIN.  167 

in  which  he  rose  to  the  r*ik  of  major.  He  was  noted  while 
in  India  for  his  scientific  knowledge,  which  procured  him  a 
lucrative  civil  appointment,  but  his  advancement  was  intei^ 
rupted  by  ill  health,  and  after  executing  extensive  surveys 
of  the  country,  he  was  under  the  necessity  of  returning 
to  England,  where  he  died.  His  collections  in  natural 
history  were  highly  appreciated  by  zoologists. 

John,  the  youngest  son,  and  subject  of  this  memoir,  was 
destined  for  the  church  by  his  father,  who  with  this  view,  had 
purchased  an  advowson  for  him.  He  received  the  first  rudi- 
ments of  his  education  at  St.  Ives,  and  afterwards  went  to 
Lowth  Grammar-School,  where  he  remained  two  years ;  but 
having  employed  a  holiday  in  walking  twelve  miles  with  a 
companion  to  look  at  the  sea,  which  up  to  that  time  he  knew 
only  by  description,  his  imagination  was  so  impressed  with 
the  grandeur  of  the  scene  that  former  predilections  for  a 
sea  life  were  confirmed,  and  he  determined  from  thenceibrth 
to  be  a  sailor.  In  hopes  of  dispelling  what  he  considered 
to  be  a  boyish  fancy,  his  father  sent  him  on  a  trial  voyage 
to  Lisbon  in  a  merchantman,  but  finding  on  his  return  that 
his  wishes  were  unchanged,  procured  hfln,  in  the  year  1800, 
an  entry  on  the  quarter-deck  of  the  Polyphemus,  74,  Cap- 
tain Lawford ;  and  this  ship  having  led  the  line  in  the  battle 
of  Copenhagen  in  1801,  young  Franklin  had  the  honor  of 
serving  in  Nelson's  hardest  fought  action.  Having  left 
school  at  the  early  age  of  thirteen,  his  classical  attainments 
were  necessarily  small,  and  at  that  period  there  was  no 
opportunity  on  board  a  ship  of  war,  of  remedying  the 
defect.  Two  months,  however,  after  the  action  of  Copen- 
hagen, he  joined  the  Investigator  discovery  ship  commanded 
by  his  relative,  Captain  Flinders,  and  under  the  training  of 
that  able  scientific  officer,  while  employed  in  exploring  and 
mapping  the  coasts  of  Australia,  he  acquired  a  correctness 
of  astronomical  observation  and  a  skill  in  surveying  which 
proved  of  eminent  utility  in  his  future  career.     In  the  pros- 


108  NEW  BIOGKAPHIES. 

ecution  of  this  service  he  gaineti  for  life  the  friendship  of 
the  celebrated  Robert  Brown,  naturalist  to  the  expedition. 

In  1803  the  Investigator  having  been  condemned  at  Port 
Jackson  as  unfit  for  the  prosecution  of  the  voyage,  Captain 
Flinders  determined  to  return  to  England  to  solicit  another 
ship  for  the  completion  of  the  survey,  and  Franklin  em- 
barked with  him  on  board  the  Porpoise  armed  store-ship, 
Lieutenant-Commander  Fowler.  In  the  voyage  homewards 
this  ship  and  the  Cato  which  accompanied  her,  were  wrecked 
in  the  night  of  the  18th  of  August,  on  a  coral  reef  distant 
from  Sandy  Cape,  on  the  main  coast  of  Australia,  six- 
ty-three leagues,  and  the  crews,  consisting  of  ninety-four 
persons,  remained  for  fifty  days  on  a  narrow  sand-bank, 
not  more  than  150  fathoms  long,  and  rising  only  four 
feet  above  the  water,  until  Captain  Flinders  having  made 
a  voyage  to  Port  Jackson,  of  250  leagues,  in  an  open 
boat,  along  a  savage  coast,  returned  to  their  relief  with  a 
ship  and  two  schooners.^  After  this  misfortune  Captain 
Flinders,  as  is  well  known,  went  to  the  Isle  of  France, 
where  he  was  unjustly  and  ungenerously  detained  a  pris- 
oner by  General  de^aen,  the  governor.  Meanwhile  Frank- 
lin proceeded  with  Lieutenant  Fowler  to  Canton,  where  he 
obtained  a  passage  to  England  in  the  Earl  Camden,  East 
Indiaman,  commanded  by  Sir  Nathaniel  Dance,  commodore 
of  the  China  fleet  of  sixteen  sail. 

On  the  15th  of  February  1804,  Captain  Dance  had  the 
distinguished  honor  of  repulsing  a  strong  French  squadron, 

1  The  Bridgewater,  another  merchantman,  was  also  in  company 
with  the  Porpoise  at  the  time  of  the  wreck,  and  narrowly  escaped 
sharing  the  same  fate.  The  master  of  her,  however,  having  on  the 
following  day  seen  the  shipwrecked  vessels  from  a  distance,  proceeded 
on  his  voyage  to  Bombay,  where,  on  his  arrival,  he  reported  their 
loss.  He  did  not  live  to  explain  his  motives  to  those  whom  he  thus 
deserted,  for  the  Bridgewater  never  was  heard  of  again  after  she  left 
Bombay. 


SIR   JOHN    FRANKLIN.  1G9 

led  by  the  redoubted  Admiral  Linois.  Lieutenant  Fowler 
assisted  the  commodore  with  his  professional  advice  in  this 
action,  and  Franklin  performed  the  important  duty  of  signal 
midshipman.  On  reaching  England,  Franklin  joined  the 
Bellerophon  74,  and  in  that  ship  he  was  again  intrusted 
with  the  signals,  a  duty  which  he  executed  with  his  ac- 
customed coolness  and  intrepidity  in  the  great  battle  of 
Trafalgar,  while  those  stationed  around  him  on  the  poop  fell 
fast,  and  were  all,  with  only  four  or  five  exceptions,  either 
killed  or  wounded.  In  the  Bedford,  his  next  ship,  he  at- 
tained the  rank  of  lieutenant,  and  remaining  in  her  for  six 
years,  latterly  as  first  lieutenant,  served  in  the  blockade  of 
Flushing,  on  the  coast  of  Portugal,  and  in  other  parts  of 
the  world,  but  chiefly  on  the  Brazil  station,  whither  the 
Bedford  had  gone  as  one  of  the  convoy  which  conducted  the 
royal  family  of  Portugal  to  Rio  de  Janeiro  in  1808.  In  the 
ill-managed  and  disastrous  attack  on  New  Orleans,  he  com- 
manded the  Bedford's  boats  in  an  engagement  with  the 
enemy's  gunboats,  one  of  which  he  boarded  and  captured, 
receiving  a  slight  wound  in  the  hand-to-hand  fight. 

On  peace  being  established,  Franklin  turned  his  atten- 
tion once  more  to  the  scientific  branch  of  his  profession, 
as  affording  scope  for  his  talents,  and  having  made  his 
wishes  known  to  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  who  was  generally 
consulted  by  government  on  such  matters,  he  set  himself 
sedulously  to  refresh  his  knowledge  of  surveying.  In 
1818,  the  discovery  of  a  north-west  passage  became  again, 
after  a  long  interval,  a  national  object,  principally  through 
the  suggestions  and  writings  of  Sir  John  Barrow,  secre- 
tary of  the  Admiralty,  and  Lieutenant  Franklin  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  Trent,  as  second  to  Captain  Buchan  of  the 
Dorothea,  hired  vessels  equipped  for  penetrating  to  the 
north  of  Spitzbergen,  and  if  possible,  crossing  to  the  Polar 
Sea  by  that  route.  .During  a  heavy  storm,  both  ships  were 
forced  to  seek  for  safety  by  boring  into  the  closely  packed 
15 


170  .  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ice,  in  which  extremely  hazardous  operation  the  Dorothea 
■was  so  much  damaged  that  her  reaching  England  became 
doubtful;  but  the  Trent  having  su^ained  less  injury,  Frank- 
lin requested  to  be  allowed  to  prosecute  the  voyage  alone, 
or  under  Captain  Buchan,  who  had  the  power  of  embarking 
in  the  Trent  if  he  chose.  The  latter,  however,  declined  to 
leave  his  officers  and  men  at  a  time  when  the  ship  was 
almost  in  a  sinking  condition,  and  directed  Franklin  to 
convey  him  to  England.  Though  success  did  not  attend 
this  voyage,  it  brought  Franklin  into  personal  intercourse, 
with  the  leading  scientific  men  of  London,  and  they  were 
not  slow  in  ascertaining  his  peculiar  fitness  for  the  command 
of  such  an  enterprise.  His  calmness  in  danger,  promptness 
and  fertility  of  resource,  and  excellent  seamanship,  as 
proved  under  the  trying  situation  which  cut  short  the  late 
voyage,  were  borne  ample  testimony  to  by  the  oflicial  re- 
ports of  hi«  commanding  oflicer ;  but  to  these  characteris- 
tics of  a  British  seaman,  he  added  other  qualities  less  com- 
mon, more  especially  an  ardent  desire  to  promote  science 
for  its  own  sake,  and  not  merely  for  the  distinction  which 
eminence  in  it  confers,  together  with  a  love  of  truth  which 
led  him  to  do  -full  justice  to  the  merits  of  his  subordinate 
officers,  without  wishing  to  claim  their  discoveries  as  a  cap- 
tain's right.  Added  to  this,  he  had  a  cheerful  buoyancy  of 
mind,  which,  sustained  by  religious  principle  of  a  depth 
known  only  to  his  most  intimate  friends,  was  not  depressed 
in  the  most  gloomy  times.  It  was,  therefore,  with  full  confi- 
dence in  his  ability  and  exertions  that  he  was,  in  1819, 
placed  in  command  of  an  expedition  appointed  to  travel 
through  Rupert's  land  to  the  shores  of  the  Arctic  Sea; 
while  Lieutenant  Parry,  who  had  in  like  manner  risen  from 
second  officer  under  Sir  John  Ross  to  a  chief  command,  was 
despatched  with  two  vessels  to  Lancaster  Sound,  a  mission 
attended  with  a  success  that  spread  his  fame  throughout  the 
•world.     At  this  period,  the  northern  coast  of  America  was 


SIR    JOHN    FRANKLIN.  171 

known  at  two  isolated  points  only,  namely,  the  mouth  of  the 
Coppermine  Eiver,  discovered  by  Hearne,  but  placed  erro- 
neously by  him  four  degrees  of  latitude  too  much  to  the 
north ;  and  the  mouth  of  the  Mackenzie,  more  correctly  laid 
down  by  the  very  able  traveller  by  whose  name  the  river  is 
now  known.  On  the  side  of  Behring's  Straits,  Cook  had  pen- 
etrated only  to  the  Icy  Cape,  and  on  the  Eastern  coasts  Cap- 
tain (Sir  John)  Ross,  in  1818,  had  ascertained  the  correct- 
ness of  Baffin's  survey,  which  had  been  questioned,  and  had 
looked  into  Lancaster  Sound  and  reported  it  to  be  closed  by 
an  impassable  mountain,  barrier.  To  stimulate  enterprise 
by  rewarding  discoverers,  the  legislature  established  a  scale 
of  premiums,  graduated  by  the  degrees  of  longitude  to 
which  ships  could  penetrate,  but  no  provision  was  made  for 
a  pecuniary  recompense  to  any  one  who  should  trace  out 
the  north-west  passage  in  boats  or  canoes. 

Lieutenant  Franklin,  attended  by  a  surgeon,  two  mid- 
shipmen, and  a  few  Orkneymen,  embarked  for  Hudson's 
Bay  in  June,  1819,  on  board  of  one  of  the  company's  ships, 
which  ran  ashore  on  Cape  Resolution  during  a  fog  on  the 
voyage  out,  and  was  saved  from  foundering  by  Franklin's 
nautical  skill.  On  reaching  the  anchorage  off  York  Fac- 
tory, a  large  hole  was  found  in  the  ship's  bottom,  but  so  far 
closed  by  a  fragment  of  rock  as  considerably  to  diminish 
the  influx  of  water.  Franklin's  instructions  left  the  route  he 
was  to  pursue  much  to  his  own  judgment ;  in  fact,  so  little 
was  then  known  in  England  of  the  country  through  which 
he  was  to  travel,  even  by  the  best  informed  members  of  the 
government,  that  no  detailed  direction  could  be  given,  and 
he  was  to  be  guided  by  the  information  he  might  be  able  to 
collect  at  York  Factory  from  the  Hudson  Bay  Company's 
servants  there  assembled.  No  time  could  be  more  un  pro- 
pitious for  a  journey  through  that  land.  For  some  years  an 
internecine  warfare  had  been  carried  on  between  the  North- 
West  Company,  operating  from  Canada,  claiming  a  right  to 


172  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  fur-trade  from  priority  of  discovery,  and  holding  com- 
missions as  justices  of  peace  from  the  colonial  govern- 
ment, and  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  which,  in  virtue  of  a 
charter  from  King  Charles  the  Second,  attempted  to  main- 
tain an  exclusive  authority  over  all  the  vast  territory 
drained  by  the  rivers  that  fall  into  the  bay.  Arrests  by 
clashing  warrants  of  the  contending  justices  were  frequent, 
might  became  right  when  the  members  of  the  two  com- 
panies met,  personal  violence,  seizure  of  property,  and 
even  assassination  were  too  common,  and  in  a  recent  fight 
at  Red  River  twenty-two  colonists  of  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company  had  lost  their  lives.  Numbers  also  had  perished 
of  famine  in  the  interior,  owing  to  the  contests  that  were 
carried  on.  When  the  expedition  landed  at  York  Factory, 
ihey  found  some  of  the  leading  North- West  partners  prison- 
ers there,  and  learned  that  both  companies  were  arming  to 
the  extent  of  their  means  for  a  decisive  contest  next  sum- 
mer. Such  being  the  state  of  the  country,  a  party  coming 
out  in  a  Hudson's  Bay  ship  was  looked  upon  with  suspicion 
by  the  members  of  the  rival  company,  and  it  was  mainly 
through  Franklin's  prudent  conduct  and  conciliating  man- 
ners that  it  was  permitted  to  proceed ;  but  sufficient  aid  to 
insure  its  safety  was  not  afforded  by  either  of  the  contend- 
ing bodies.  Wintering  the  first  year  on  the  Saskatchewan, 
the  expedition  was  fed  by  the  Hudson  Bay  Company ;  the 
second  winter  was  spent  on  the  "  barren  grounds,"  the  party 
subsisting  on  game  and  fish  procured  by  their  own  exer- 
tions, or  purchased  from  their  native  neighbors ;  and  in  the 
following  summer  the  expedition  descended  the  Coppermine 
River,  and  surveyed  a  considerable  extent  of  the  sea-coast 
to  the  eastward,  still  depending  for  food  on  the  usual  sup- 
plies of  the  chase,  and  often  faring  very  scantily,  or  fasting 
altogether.  The  disasters  attending  the  return  over  the 
barren  grounds,  on  the  premature  approach  of  winter,  have 
been  told  by  Franklin  himself  in  a  narrative  which  excited 


SIR    JOHN    FRANKLIN.  173 

universal  interest  and  commiseration.  The  loss  of  Mr 
Hood,  a  young  officer  of  very  great  promise,  and  who  at 
the  time  of  his  death  had  been  promoted  to  the  rank  of 
lieutenant,  was  especially  deplored.  The  survivors  of  this 
expedition  travelled  from  the  outset  at  York  Factory  down 
to  their  return  to  It  again,  by  land  and  water,  5,550  miles. 
While  engaged  on  this  service,  Franklin  was  promoted  to 
be  a  commander,  and  after  his  return  to  England  in  1822, 
he  obtained  the  post  rank  of  captain,  and  was  elected  to 
be  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society.  In  the  succeeding  year 
he  married  Eleanor,^  the  youngest  daughter  of  William 
Porden,  Esquire,  an  eminent  architect,  by  whom  he  had  a 
daughter  and  only  child,  now  the  wife  of  the  Rev.  John 
Philip  Gell. 

In  a  second  expedition,  which  left  home  in  1825,  he 
descended  the  Mackenzie  under  more  favorable  auspices, 
peace  having  been  established  throughout  the  fur-countries 
under  the  exclusive  government  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany, which  had  taken  the  North- West  traders  into  partner- 
ship, and  was  then  in  a  position  to  affijrd  him  effectual  assist- 
ance, and  speed  him  on  his  way  in  comfort.  This  time  the 
coast  line  was  traced  through  thirty-seven  degrees  of  longi- 
tude from  the  mouth  of  the  Coppermine  River,  where  his 
former  survey  commenced,  to  nearly  the  150th  meridian, 
and  approaching  within  160  miles  of  the  most  easterly 
point  attained  by  Captain  Beechey,  who  was  coopei'ating 
with  him  from  Behring's  Straits.  His  exertions  were  fully 
appreciated  at  home  and  abroad.  He  was  knighted  in  1829, 
received  the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Civil  Law  from 
the  University  of  Oxford,  was  adjudged  the  gold  medal  of 
the  Geographical  Society  of  Paris,  and  was  elected  in  1846, 
Correspondent  of  the  Institute  of  France  in  the  Academy 
of   Sciences.     Though  the  late   surveys  executed  by  him- 

1  She  died  in  1825. 
15* 


174  NEW   BIOGRAPHIKS. 

self  and  by  a  detachment  under  command  of  Sir  John  Rich- 
ardson comprised  one,  and  within  a  few  miles  of  two,  of  the 
spaces  for  which  a  parliamentary  reward  was  offered,  the 
Board  of  Longitude  declined  making  the  award,  but  a  bill 
was  soon  afterwards  laid  before  parliament  by  the  secretary 
of  the  Admiralty  abrogating  the  reward  altogether,  on  the 
ground  of  the  discoveries  contemplated  having  been  thus 
effected.^  In  1828,  he  married  his  second  wife,  Jane,  sec- 
ond daughter  of  John  Griffin,  Esq. 

Sir  John's  next  official  employment  was  on  the  Mediter- 
ranean station,  in  command  of  the  Rainbow,  and  his  ship 
soon  became  proverbial  in  the  squadron  for  the  happiness 
and  comfort  of  her  officers  and  crew.^  As  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  essential  service  he  had  rendered  off  Patras  in 
the  "  war  of  liberation,"  he  received  the  Cross  of  the 
Redeemer  of  Greece  from  King  Otho,  and  after  his  return 
to  England  he  was  created  Knight  Commander  of  the  Guel- 
phic  order  of  Hanover. 

In  1836,  Lord  Glenelg  offered  Sir  John  the  lieutenant- 
governorship  of  Antigua,  and  afterwards  of  Van  Diemen's 
Land,  or  Tasmania,  which  latter  he  accepted  with  the  condi- 
tion that  he  might  be  allowed  to  resign  it,  if,  on  a  war  break- 
ing out,  he  were  tendered  the  command  of  a  ship.  He  pre- 
ferred rising  in  his  own  profession,  to  the  emoluments  of  the 
civil  service.  In  as  far  as  a  man  of  independent  political 
principles,  of  strict  honor  and  integrity,  conspicuous  for  the 

J  Messrs.  Dean  and  Simpson  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  at  a 
later  period  (1836-1839)  completed  the  survey  of  160  miles  of  coast 
line  lying  between  the  extreme  points  of  Bceehcy  and  Franklin,  and 
navigated  the  sea  eastwards  beyond  the  mouth  of  Back's  Great  Fish 
River,  proving  the  existence  of  a  continuous  watercourse  from  Behr- 
ing's  Straits  through  73°  of  longitude,  as  far  eastward  as  the  ninety- 
fourth  meridian. 

2  The  sailors,  with  their  usual  fondness  for  epithets,  named  the  ship 
the  "  Celestial  Rainbow  "  and  "  Franklin's  Paradise." 


SIR   JOHN    FRANKLIN.  175 

benevolence  of  his  character,  without  private  interests  to 
serve,  and  of  a  capacity  which  had  been  shown  on  several 
important  commands,  was  likely  to  benefit  the  colony  he  was 
sent  to  govern,  the  choice  was  a  judicious  one,  and  did  honor 
to  Lord  Glenelg's  discernment.  Dr.  Arnold,  no  mean  judge 
of  character,  rejoicing  in  the  promise  the  appointment  gave 
of  a  new  era  in  the  annals  of  colonial  management,  expressed 
the  delight  with  which,  had  circumstances  permitted,  he 
would  hav§  labored  with  such  a  governor  in  founding  a  sys- 
tem of  general  education  and  religious  instruction  in  that 
distant  land.  Sir  John's  government,  which  lasted  till  the 
end  of  1843,  was  marked  by  several  events  of  much  interest. 
One  of  his  most  popular  measures  was  the  opening  of  the 
doors  of  the  legislative  council  to  the  public,  a  practice  soon 
afterwards  followed  by  the  older  colony  of  New  South 
Wales.  He  also  originated  a  college,  endowing  it  largely 
from  his  private  funds  with  money  and  lands,  in  the  hope 
that  it  would  eventually  prove  the  means  of  affording  to  all 
parties  secular  and  religious  instruction  of  the  highest  kind. 
At  Sir  John's  request  Dr.  Arnold  selected  a  favorite  pupil, 
the  Rev.  John  Philip  Gell,^  to  take  the  direction  of  this 
institution  ;  but  much  opposition  to  the  fundamental  plan  of 
the  college  was  made  by  various  religious  bodies,  and  after 
Sir  John  left  the  colony  the  exclusive  management  of  it  was 
vested  in  the  Church  of  England,  with  free  admission  to  the 
members  of  other  persuasions.  In  his  time  also  the  colony 
of  Victoria  was  founded  by  settlers  from  Tasmania ;  and 
towards  its  close,  transportation  to  New  South  Wales  having 
been  abolished,  the  convicts  from  every  part  of  the  British 
empire  were  sent  to  Tasmania.  Up  to  the  period  of  his 
quitting  the  government  this  concentration  had  occasioned 
no  material  inconvenience,  neither  was  there  at  that  time 

1  In  later  years   he  became  Sir  John's   son-in-law,  as  mentioned 
above. 


176  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

any  organized  opposition  to  it.  On  an  increase  to  the  lieu- 
ten  ant-governor's  salary  being  voted  by  the  colonial  legisla- 
ture, Sir  John  declined  to  derive  any  advantage  from  it  per- 
sonally, while  he  secured  the  augmentation  to  his  successor. 
In  1838  he  founded  a  scientific  society  at  Hobarton  (now 
called  the  "  Royal  Society").  Its  papers  were  printed  at 
his  expense,  and  its  meetings  were  held  in  Government 
House.  He  had  also  the  gratification  of  erecting  in  Soutli 
Australia,  with  the  aid  of  the  governor  of  thajt  colony,  si 
handsome  granite  obelisk,  dedicated  and  inscribed  to  the 
memory  of  his  former  commanding  ofiicer,  Captain  Flinders, 
to  whose  discoveries  we  owe  our  earliest  knowledge  of  thai 
part  of  the  continent  of  Australia.  It  stands  on  a  lofty  hill, 
and  serves  as  a  landmark  to  sailors.  A  magnetic  observa- 
tory, founded  in  1840,  at  Hobarton,  in  connection  with  the 
head  establishment  under  Colonel  Sabine  at  Woolwich, 
was  an  object  of  constant  personal  interest  to  Sir  John  ;  and 
Tasmania  being  the  appointed  refitting  station  of  several 
expeditions  of  discovery  in  the  Antarctic  regions,  he  en- 
joyed frequent  opportunities  of  exercising  the  hospitality  he 
delighted  in,  and  of  showing  his  ardor  in  promoting  the 
interests- of  science  whenever  it  lay  in  his  power  to  do  so. 
The  lamented  Dumont  d'Urville  commanded  the  French 
expedition,  and  Sir  James  Clark  Ross  the  English  one,  con- 
sisting of  the  Erebus  and  Terror.  The  surveying  vessels 
employed  in  those  seas  during  that  period  came  also  in  suc- 
cession to  Hobarton  —  namely,  the  Beagle,  Captain  Wickham  ; 
the  Pelorus,  Captain  Harding;  the  Rattlesnake,  Captain 
Owen  Stanley ;  the  Beagle  (2d  voyage),  Captain  Stokes  , 
and  the  Fly,  Captain  Blackwood ;  all  of  whom,  with  the 
officers  under  them,  received  from  the  lieutenant-governor  a 
brother  sailor's  welcome.  Thus  pleasantly  occupied,  the 
years  allotted  to  a  colonial  governorship  drew  towards  a 
close,  and  Sir  John  contemplated  with  no  common  satisfac- 
tion  the  advancing  strides  of  the   colony  in  material  pros- 


SIR   JOHN    FRANKLIN.  177 

perity;  but  he  was  not  destined  to  be  spared  one  of  those 
deep  mortifications  to  which  every  one  is  exposed,  however 
upright  may  be  his  conduct  abroad,  who  is  dependent  for 
support  and  approval  upon  a  chief  at  home  that  changes 
with  every  party  revolution.  When  Sir  John  was  sent  to 
Tasmania,  England  had  not  yet  recognized  as  an  established 
fact  that  the  inhabitants  of  a  colony  are  better  judges  of  their 
own  interests,  and  more  able  to  manage  their  own  affairs, 
than  bureaucracy  in  Downing  Street,  with  a  constantly  shift- 
ing head,  ill  informed  of  the  factious  oligarchies  that  infest 
colonies,  and  of  the  ties  that  connect  them  with  subordinate 
officials  at  home.  Previous  to  leaving  England,  Sir  John 
was  advised,  and  indeed  instructed,  to  consult  the  colonial 
secretary  of  Tasmania  in  all  matters  of  public  concern,  as 
being  a  man  of  long  experience,  thoroughly  acquainted  witli 
the  affairs  of  the  colony  ;  and  he  found  on  taking  charge  of  iiis 
government,  that  this  was  a,  correct  character  of  the  officer 
next  to  himself  in  authority.  Mr.  Montagu  was  a  man  emi- 
nently skilful  in  the  management  of  official  matters,  but  he 
was  also  the  acknowledged  head  of  a  party  in  tlie  colony 
bound  together  by  family  ties,  and  possessing  great  local 
influence  from  the  important  and  lucrative  situations  held 
by  its  members,  and  the  extensive  operations  of  a  bank  of 
which  they  had  the  chief  control.  Party  struggles  ran  high 
in  the  legislative  council,  and  the  lieutenant-governor's  posi- 
tion was  one  of  great  delicacy,  while  the  difficulty  of  his 
situation  was  vastly  augmented  through  the  practice  of  the 
officials  in  Downing  street  of  encouraging  private  communi- 
cations on  public  measures  from  subordinate  officers  of  the 
colony,  and  weighing  them  with  the  despatches  of  the  lieu- 
tenant-governor. For  some  years,  by  Sir  John's  prudent 
conduct,  the  harmony  of  the  colonial  executive  was  not  in- 
terrupted ;  but  at  a  later  period  the  colonial  secretary,  hav- 
ing visited  England,  returned  to  Tasmania  with  greater  pre- 
tensions, and  commenced  a  course  of  independent  action, 


178  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

ever  hostile  to  his  chief,  subversive  of  the  harmonious  co- 
operation heretofore  existing,  and  thus  injurious  to  the 
interests  of  the  colony,  so  that  Sir  John  was  under  the 
necessity  of  suspending  this  officer  from  his  functions  until 
the  pleasure  of  Lord  Stanley,  then  secretary  of  state  for 
the  colonies,  was  known.  Mr.  Montagu  immediately  pro- 
ceeded to  England  to  state  his  own  case,  and  he  did  it  with 
such  effect  that  Loi'd  Stanley,  while  admitting  that  the 
colonial  secretary  had  acquired  a  local  influence  which  ren- 
dei'ed  "his  restoration  to  his  office  highly  inexpedient,"^ 
penned  a  despatch  which  is  not  unjustly  characterized  as  a 
consummate  piece  of  special  pleading  for  Mr.  Montagu,  whom 
it  absolves,  while  it  comments  on  the  lieutenant-governor's 
proceedings  in  a  style  exceedingly  offensive  to  a  high-minded 
officer  who  had  acted,  as  he  conceived,  with  the  strictest 
regard  to  the  public  interests.  The  extraordinary  measure 
was  also  resorted  to  of  instantly  furnishing  Mr.  Montagu, 
then  in  attendance  at  Downing  street,  with  a  copy  of  this 
despatch,  so  that  he  was  enabled  to  transmit  it  to  Hobarton, 
where  it  was  exposed  in  the  Bank  to  public  inspection.  At 
the  same  time  there  was  circulated  privately  amongst  the 
officers  of  the  colonial  government  and  others  a  journal  of 
his  transactions  with  the  lieutenant-governor,  and  of  his 
private  communications  with  members  of  Franklin's  family, 
which  he  had  kept  for  years  while  on  terms  of  close  social 
intercourse  with  them.  This  volume  having  answered  in 
England  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  intended,  was  now 
exhibited  in  the  colony  as  containing  an  account  of  the  sub- 
jects in  which  he  stated  he  had  held  conversations  with 
Lord  Stanley.  All  this  took  place  before  the'  lieutenant- 
governor  received  ofl&cial  information  of  Lord  Stanley's 
decision.     The   recovery  of  a   document   which   had   lain 

1  Lord  Stanley's  despatch,  September  13, 1842.    Mr.  Montagu  was 
promoted  to  be  colonial  secretary  at  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope. 


SIR   JOHN   FEANKLIN.  179 

secluded  in  an  office  in  the  colony  enabled  Sir  John  after- 
wards more  fully  to  substantiate  one  of  the  most  important 
charges  he  had  made ;  nevertheless  Lord  Stanley  refused  to 
modify  the  terms  he  had  employed,  or  to  make  any  conces- 
sion calculated  to  soothe  the  wounded  feeling  of  an  honor- 
able and  zealous  officer.  The  arrival  of  a  new  lieutenant 
governor,  the  late  Sir  John  Eardley  Wilmot,  bringing  with 
him  the  first  notice  of  his  own  appointment,  and  consequently 
finding  Sir  John  still  in  the  colony,  served  to  show  more 
strongly  than  could  otherwise  have  been  done,  the  hold  the 
latter  had  gained  on  the  affections  of  the  colonists,  and  the 
verdict  pronounced  on  Lord  Stanley's  despatch  by  the  peo- 
ple, to  whom  all  the  merits  of  the  case  were  most  fully 
known.  Sir  John,  after  three  months'  longer  residence  at 
Hobarton  as  a  private  individual,  waiting  for  a  passage  to 
England,  during  which  time  he  received  addresses  emanat- 
ing from  every  district  of  the  colony,  was  attended  to  the 
place  of  embarkation  by  the  most  numerous  assemblage  of 
all  classes  of  people  which  had  ever  been  seen  on  those 
shores,  the  recently  consecrated  Bishop  of  Tasmania '  walk- 
ing at  their  head,  along  with  the  new  colonial  seci'etary,  the 
late  Mr.  Bicheno,  who  for  some  months  had  acted  in  the 
greatest  harmony  with  Sir  John.  A  local  paper,  after  de- 
scribing the  scene  in  much  detail,  adds :  "  Thus  departed 
from  among  us  as  true  and  upright  a  governor  as  ever  the 
destinies  of  a  British  colony  were  intrusted  to."  Years 
afterwards,  when  the  enthusiasm  of  party  feelings  could 
have  no  share  in  their  proceedings,  the  colonists  showed  their 
remembrance  of  his  virtues  in  a  more  substantial  manner, 
as  will  be  mentioned  below.  Sir  John,  on  receiving  the 
secretary  of  state's  despatch,  had  tendered  his  resignation, 
but  his  successor  was  appointed  before  his  letter  could  reach 

^  The  erection  of  Tasmania  into  a  see  was  promoted  by  Sir  John's 
exertions  and  representations. 


180  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

England,  though,  as  we  have  just  said,  his  recall  despatch 
did  not  come  to  Tasmania  till  some  days  after  Sir  Eardley's 
arrival. 

Owing  to  the  fortunate  rendezvous  at  Hobarton  of  the 
scientific  expeditions  and  surveying  ships  above  named,  as 
well  as  many  of  her  Majesty's  vessels  engaged  in  the  ordi- 
nary service  of  those  seas,  the  intrigues  of  the  family  faction 
and  their  supporters  in  the  colony  being  matters  of  common 
discussion,  became  known  to  numbers  of  Sir  John's  brother 
officers,  and  a  true  estimate  of  the  treatment  he  had  received 
from  the  colonial  minister  was  formed  by  the  profession  to 
which  he  belonged.     He  found,  therefore,  on  reaching  Eng- 
land, that  the  confidence  of  the  Admiralty  in  his  integrity 
and  ability  was  undiminished,  and  this  was  speedily  shown  by 
his  appointment  in  1845  to  the  command  of  an  expedition, 
consisting  of  the  Erebus  and  Terror,  fitted  out  for  the  fur- 
ther discovery  of  the  north-west  passage.     With  an  experi- 
enced second  in  command,  Captain  Crozier,  trained  under 
Parry  and  James  Ross  from   1821  in  the  navigation  of  icy 
seas,  a  select  body  of  officers  chosen  for  their  talent  and 
energy,  and  excellent  crews,  in  ships  as  strong  as  art  could 
make  them,  and  well  furnished,  Franklin  sailed  from  Eng- 
land for  the  last  time  on  the  26th  of  May,  1845.     He  was 
last  seen  by  a  whaler  on  the  26th  of  July,  in  Baffin's  Bay, 
at  which  time  the  expedition  was  proceeding  prosperously. 
Letters  written  by  him  a  i'ew  days  previously  to  that  date 
were    couched    in    language    of   cheerful    anticipation    of 
success,  while  those  received    from  his    officers    expressed 
their  admiration  of  the  seamanlike  qualities  of  their  com- 
mander, and  the  happiness  they  had  in  serving  under  him. 
In  the  autumn  of  1847,  public  anxiety  began  to  be  mani- 
fested for  the  safety  of  the  discoverers,  of  whom  nothing  had 
been  heard ;  and  searching  expedition  after  expedition  ^ie- 
spatched  in  quest  of  them  in  1848,  and  the  succeeding  years 
down  to  1854,  regardless  of  cost  or  hazard,  redound  to  the 


SIR   JOHN   FRANKLIN.  181 

lasting  credit  of  England.  In  this  pious  undertaking  Sir 
John's  heroic  wife  took  the  lead.  Her  exertions  were  un- 
wearied, she  exhausted  her  private  funds  in  sending  out 
auxiliary  vessels  to  quarters  not  comprised  in  the  public 
search,  and  by  her  pathetic  appeals  she  roused  the  sympathy 
of  the  whole  civilized  world.  France  sent  her  Bellot; 
the  United  States  of  America  replied  to  her  calls  by  man- 
ning two  searching  expeditions,  the  expenses  of  which  were 
borne  by  Mr.  Grennell,  a  wealthy  private  citizen  of  great 
humanity  and  liberality ;  and  the  inhabitants  of  Tasmania 
subscribed  ~£l,700,  which  they  transmitted  to  Lady  Frank- 
lin, as  their  contribution  towards  the  expense  of  the  search. 
In  August,  1850,  traces  of  the  missing  ships  were  discov- 
ered, and  it  was  ascertained  that  their  first  winter  had  been 
spent  behind  Beechey  Island,  where  they  had  remained  at 
least  as  late  as  April,  1846.  Yet  in  spite  of  every  exertion 
by  the  searching  parties,  no  further  tidings  were  obtained 
until  the  spring  of  1854,  when  Dr.  Rae,  then  conducting  an 
exploring  party  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company,  learnt  from  the 
Esquimaux  that  in  1850,  white  men  to  the  number  of  about 
forty,  had  been  seen  dragging  a  boat  over  the  ice,  near  the 
north  shore  of  King  William's  Island,  and  that  later  in  the 
same  season,  but  before  the  breaking  up  of  the  ice,  the  bodies 
of  the  whole  party  were  found  by  the  natives  on  a  point 
lying  at  a  short  distance  to  the  north-west  of  Back's  Great 
Fish  River,  where  they  had  perished  from  the  united  effects 
of  cold  and  famine.  These  unfortunate  men  were  identified 
as  the  remnant  of  the  crews  of  the  Erebus  and  Terror,  by 
numerous  articles  which  the  Esquimaux  had  picked  ^up  at 
the  place  where  they  perished,  many  of  which  Dr.  Rae  pur- 
chased from  that  people  and  brought  to  England.  Point 
Ogle  is  supposed  by  this  gentleman  to  be  the  spot  where  the 
bodies  lie  ;  and  this  summer  (1855)  Mr.  Anderson  of  the 
Hudson  Bay  Company,  started  from  Great  Slave  Lake  to  ex- 
amine the  locality,  pay  the  last  tribute  of  respect  to  the  dead, 
16 


182  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

0 

and  collect  any  written  papers  that  might  remain  there,  or 
books  and  journals  said  to  be  in  the  hands  of  the  Esquimaux. 
By  considering  the  direction  in  which  the  party  that  per- 
ished were  travelling  when  seen  by  the  natives,  and  the 
small  district  that  remains  unexplored,  we  must  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  ships  were  finally  beset  between  the  70th 
and  72d  parallels  of  latitude,  and  near  the  100th  meridian. 
Two  entrances  from  the  north  may  exist  to  this  part  of  the 
sea,  one  along  the  west  coast  of  North  Somerset  and  Boothia, 
which  is  an  almost  certain  one  ;  and  the  other  which  is 
more  conjectural,  may  occupy  the  short  unexplored  space 
between  Captain  Sherard  Osborn's  and  Lieutenant  Wynn- 
iatt's  extreme  points.  To  approach  this  last  strait,  if  it 
actually  exists.  Cape  Walker  would  be  left  on  the  eastern 
side  of  the  passing  ships.  It  is  a  singular  and  most  melan- 
choly fact,  that  the  very  limited  district  of  the  Arctic  Sea 
thus  indicated,  and  which  was  specially  adverted  to  in  the 
original  plan  of  seai'ch,  is  almost  the  only  spot  that  has  defied 
the  exertions  of  the  skilful  and  persevering  officers  who 
have  attempted  to  explore  it.  Sir  James  Ross  failed  in 
reaching  it ;  it  intervenes  between  the  extremes  of  the  long 
and  laborious  journeys  made  by  Captain  Sherard  Osborn 
and  Lieutenant  Wynniatt.  Dr.  Rae's  two  attempts  to  en- 
ter it  were  frustrated  by  the  state  of  the  ice  and  other  cir- 
cumstances, and  Captain  CoUinson  was  also  stopped  short 
on  its  southern  side  by  the  want  of  fuel.  Lady  Franklin 
had  sent  out  the  Prince  Albert  for  the  express  purpose  of 
searching  this  quarter,  but  Mr.  Kennedy  unfortunately,  in- 
stead, of  adhering  to  the  letter  of  instructions,  trusted  to  a 
distant  view  of  the  passage  from  the  north,  which  seemed  to 
him  to  be  closed,  and  turning  to  the  west,  made  his  memo- 
rable winter  journey  through  a  space,  which,  though  he 
was  ignorant  of  the  fiict  at  the  time,  had  been  previously 
examined. 

With  the  utmost  economy  in  its  use,  fuel   would  soon 


SIR   JOHN   FRANKLIN.  183 

become  precious  on  board  the  Erebus  and  Terror ;  and  it  is 
probable  that  after  three  years  one  of  the  ships  would  be 
broken  up  to  furnish  this  essential  article.  Provisions  could 
not  last  longer  without  placing  the  crews  on  short  allowigice, 
and  to  do  so  in  that  climate,  subjected  them  to  sure  and  de- 
structive attacks  of  scurvy.  Fish  and  venison,  it  is  true, 
might  be  procured  in  quantities  sufficient  to  modify  these 
conclusions,  but  not  to  a  great  extent :  and,  beyond  all  ques- 
tion, the  numbers  of  the  intrepid  sailors  who  left  England 
in  such  health  and  spirits  in  1845,  had  waned  sadly  by  the 
close  of  the  season  for  operations  in  1849.  The  forty  men 
seen  by  the  natives  early  in  1850,  were  doubtless  the  only 
survivors  at  tliat  date.  Franklin,  had  he  lived  till  then, 
would  have  been  sixty-four  years  old,  but  no  one  of  that 
age  was  in  the  number  seen  by  the  natives.  Had  he  been 
then  in  existence,  he  would  have  taken  another  route  on  the 
abandonment  of  his  ship,  as  no  one  knows  better  than  he 
the  fatal  result  of  an  attempt  to  cross  that  wide  expanse  of 
frozen  ground  lying  between  the  mouth  of  the  Great  Fish 
River  and  the  far-distant  Hudson  Bay  post  on  the  south 
side  of  Great  Slave  Lake.  Who  can  conjecture  the  reason 
that  turned  the  steps  of  the  weary  wanderers  in  that  direc- 
tion ?  Perhaps  the  desire  of  solving  the  long-sought  problem 
of  a  north-west  passage,  even  then  animated  their  emaciated 
frames,  and  it  is  certain  that  they  did  solve  it,  though  none 
of  them  lived  to  claim  the  grateful  applause  of  their  country- 
men. Later  in  point  of  time,  and  in  a  higher  latitude,  Sir 
Robert  M'Clure  also,  filled  up  a  narrow  gap  between  pre- 
vious discoveries,  and  so  traced  out  the  north-west  passage 
by  travelling  over  ice  that  has  in  the  five  several  years  in 
which  it  has  been  attempted,  proved  to  be  a  barrier  to 
ships.  If  ever  in  the  pursuit  of  whales,  or  for  conveyance 
of  minerals,  commercial  enterprise  endeavors  to  force  a 
north-west  passage  by  steam,  the  southern  route,  whose  last 
link  was  forged  by  Franklin's  party  with  their  lives,  will  un- 


184  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

doubtingly  be  chosen.  And  it  is  to  be  deeply  regretted  that 
the  parliamentary  committee  in  recommending  the  grant  of 
public  money  to  Sir  Robert  M'Clure,  which  his  courage  and 
enterprise  so  well  deserved,  should  have  omitted  to  mention 
the  prior  discovery  made  by  the  crews  of  the  Erebus  and 
Terror.' 

This  sketch  of  Sir  John  Franklin's  character  and  public 
services  has  been  written  by  one  who  served  long  under  his 
command,  who  during  upwards  of  twenty-five  years  of  close 
intimacy  had  his  entire  confidence,  and  in  times  of  great 
difficulty  and  distress,  when  all  conventional  disguise  was 
out  of  the  question,  beheld  his  calmness  and  unaffected  piety. 
If  it  has  in  some  passages  assumed  the  appearance  of  eulogy, 
it  has  done  so  not  for  the  purpose  of  unduly  exalting  its 
subject,  but  from  a  firm  conviction  of  the  truth  of  the  state- 
ments. On  the  other  hand,  the  writer  has  abstained,  in  the 
only  sentences  in  which  it  was  necessary  to  speak  of  oppo- 
nents, from  saying  a  single  word  more  of  their  conduct  or 
motives  than  strict  justice  to  Franklin's  memory  demanded. 
Franklin  himself  was  singularly  devoid  of  any  vindictive  feel- 
ing. While  he  defended  his  own  honor,  he  would  have 
delighted  in  showing  any  kindness  in  his  power  to  his  bit- 
terest foe ;  and  in  emulation  of  that  spirit  the  preceding 
pages  have  been  penned. 

1  Spars  and  pieces  of  rail  recognized  as  having  belonged  to  the 
Erebus  and  Terror  were  picked  up  by  Captain  Collinson  near  liis 
wintering  place  in  Cambridge  Bay,  and  are  sufficient  evidence  of 
currents  setting  in  that  direction,  through  a  passage  incumbered 
doubtless  with  drift  ice. 


HOMER. 


Homer,  the  greatest  epic  poet  of  Greece,  and  a  name  of 
the  highest  significance,  not  with  regard  to  Greece  only,  but 
to  Europe  generally,  and  to  the  history  of  the  human  race. 
For  in  Homer  we  have  to  do  not  merely  with  a  poet  of  the 
first  class,  holding  the  same  place  in  literature  that  Aristotle 
and  Newton  do  in  science,  but  with  the  oldest  records,  after 
the  books  of  Moses,  that  have  exercised  a  permanent  influ- 
ence on  the  civilization  of  the  West.  It  is  but  reasonable, 
therefore,  that  we  should  give  a  more  full  and  minute  con- 
sideration to  the  Homeric  poems,  than  even  the  high  position 
of  their  author  on  the  topmost  peak  of  the  Hellenic  Parnas- 
sus would  justify. 

The  life  of  Homer  did  not  fall  within  the  strictly  histor- 
ical epoch  of  Greek  literature ;  nor  were  there  any  diligent 
biographers  in  his  day  who  made  it  a  business  to  collect  and 
to  make  public  the  notable  sayings  and  doings  of  men  of 
extraordinary  genius.  The  existing  literary  testimonies  for 
the  facts  connected  with  the  life  of  the  poet,  do  not  carry  us 
further  back  than  the  age  of  Pindar  (b.  c.  500)  ;  that  is  to 
say,  to  a  period  more  than  three  hundred  years  posterior  to 
the  age  of  the  great  poet,  taken  at  the  latest  of  the  various 
dates  to  which  it  is  assigned.  What  we  know  of  Homer, 
therefore,  we  know  only  through  the  channel  of  national 
tradition,  uncertain  and  vague  as  that  must  always  be  in  an 

16*  (^85) 


186  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

age  when  writing  was  either  unknown  or  little  practised, 
and  criticism  of  literary  documents  never  dreamt  of.  "We 
shall  not,  therefore,  be  surprised  to  hear  that  even  the  birth- 
place of  their  great  national  poet  was  unknown  to  the  Greeks, 
and  that  the  period  in  which  he  flourished  was  a  puzzle  to 
their  ablest  chronologers.  We  are  not,  however,  to  suppose 
that  on  this  interesting  subject  we  know  absolutely  nothing. 
However  vague  popular  traditions  may  be,  and  however 
discrepant  in  minor  details,  they  will  generally  be  found  to 
contain  a  nucleus  of  truth  which  a  practised  eye  can 
readily  distinguish  from  the  fabulous  accretions  of  idle  or 
impudent  imaginations ;  and  if  the  general  substance  of  such 
traditions  regarding  the  life  of  a  great  poet,  i^  not  contra- 
dicted, or  is  rather  confirmed,  by  the  internal  evidence  of 
his  reputed  works,  a  reasonable  man  may  take  his  stand 
upon  them  as  confidently  as  he  does  upon  any  other  conclu- 
sion, resting  upon  evidence  which  may  reach  the  highest  de- 
gree of  probability,  but  can  in  no  case  partake  of  absolute 
scientific  certainty. 

The  authorship  of  the  Ldves  of  Homer,  printed  in  Barnes', 
and  other  editions,  and  in  Westermann's  collection,^  is  un- 
known ;  but  their  value  as  literary  documents  depends  not 
on  what  the  authors  say  in  their  own  name,  which  is  utterly 
worthless,  but  on  the  ancient  authorities  and  special  popular 
traditions  which  they  quote.  From  them  we  know  what 
was  the  account  given  by  Aristotle  of  the  birthplace  of 
Homer,  what  Ephorus  said  was  the  local  tradition  of  the 
people  of  Cumae,  and  what  Homeric  monuments  were  shown 
by  the  islanders  of  los.  A  very  slight  consideration  of 
these  ancient  testimonies  thus  analyzed  will  suffice  to  show 
the  vanity  of  the  claims  put  forth  by  various  Greek  cities 
as  having  given  birth  to  Homer.  Of  these  seven  is  the 
number  commonly  mentioned  in  a  well-known  distich,^  but 

1  'BioypiKpoi,  Brunswick,  1845.  *  Aul.  Gell.  iii.,  11. 


HOMER.  187 

the  reader  who  chooses  to  turn  uj^Suidas  will  find  at  least 
half  a  dozen  more  ;  and  to  increase  learning  in  this  matter 
will  only  be  to  increase  skepticism,  unless  a  man  carries 
with  him  the  sound  maxim  of  the  lawyers,  — ponderanda  sunt 
testimonia  non  numeranda.  The  claims  of  Athens,  for  in- 
stance, rest,  according  to  a  distinct  testimony,^  on  the  mere 
fact  that  the  lonians  of  Smyrna  were  a  colony  from  Attica, 
and  that  if  Homer  was  a  Smyrniote,  he  might  reasonably  be 
called  an  Athenian,  just  as  a  person  born  in  Sydney  may  say 
he  is  a  Londoner,  because  his  father,  or  his  grandfather,  or 
his  great-grandfather  was  so.  In  a  similar  loose  fashion  the 
claims  of  Salamis  in  Cyprus,  are  found  to  be  explained  by 
the  fact  that  Stasinus,  one  of  the  poets  of  the  Epic  Cycle, 
was  a  native  of  that  island,  and  that  the  epic  poem  called 
Cypria,  written  by  him,  was  by  some  attributed  to  Homer, 
from  whom  Stasinus  is  said  to  have  received  it  as  a  mar- 
riage gift  with  the  daughter  of  the  great  poet.^  Colophon, 
in  a  similar  way,  claimed  to  have  produced  the  poet  of  the 
Iliad,  because  of  a  famous  humorous  poem  called  the 
Margites,  of  which  Homer  was  generally  supposed  to  be  the 
author.^  But  the  same  critical  inspection  which  enables  us 
to  expose  the  flimsy  pretensions  of  these  places,  reveals  the 
remarkable  fact  that  those  other  cities  which  have  most  to 
say  for  themselves  as  being  the  native  country  of  Homer, 
unite,  by  the  peculiar  form  of  their  traditions,  in  giving  to 
Smyrna  at  least  some  share  in  hi^^^birth,  —  a  plain  admission 
that  at  the  time  when  these  traditions  were  framed,  the 
claims  of  Smyrna  were  considered  so  strong  that  they  could 
not  possibly  be  ignored.  Thus  the  most  detailed  and  best 
known  Life,  that  attributed  to  Herodotus,  which  was  for  a 
long  time  received  as  authentic,  deduces  the  parentage  of 
Homer  from  Magnesia,  in  Thessaly;  thence  Melanopus  is 

1  Lives  <5  and  e  in  Westermann.  2  jElian,  V.  H.  ix.,  15. 

^  Welcker,  Efic  Cycle,  1.,  184. 


188  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

said  to  have  crossed  thc'^gean,  and  settled  in  Cumae,  the 
principal  city  of  the  ^olians,  in  Asia  Minor  ;  here  he  mar- 
ried a  lady  of  Cuma;,  by  whom  he  had  a  daughter  called 
Critheis ;    and  this  maiden  having,  unknown  to  her  guar- 
dians, formed  a  connection  with  some  unknown  individual  of 
the  male  sex,  was,  to  avoid  exposure,  sent  to  Smyrna,  where, 
on  the  banks  of  the  river  Meles,  she  brought  forth  Homer, 
thence  called  Melesigenes.    We  have  already  said  that  such 
local  traditions  are  not  history ;  but  when  we  find  another 
of  the   seven  cities,  namely,  los,  framing  a  local   legend, 
which,  while  differing  from  that  of  Cumaj  in  every  other 
point,  agrees  with  it  in  bringing  the  immortal  minstrel  to  the 
banks  of  the  Meles  to  be  born,  we  must  be  altogether  blind 
to  the  spirit  in  which  local  legends  are  composed,  if  we  do 
not  see  here  the  strongest  proof  that  the  real  country  of 
Homer  was  that  which  is  distinctly  allowed  in  the  legends 
of  those  very  cities  which  are  most  interested  in  denying  its 
claims.     We  say,  therefore,  that   according  to  all   human 
probability,  Homer  was  born  at  Smyrna ;  and  when  we  say, 
with   equal  probability,  that  he  died  at  los,  —  one  of  the 
Cyclades  in  the  Archipelago,  for  on  this  point  the  various 
accounts  also  agree,  —  we  have  stated  all  that  can  be  said 
to  be  known  with  regard  to  the  father  of  epic  poetry  in 
Greece.    The  other  events  of  his  life,  as  given  in  the  larger 
biographies,  are  fictions  invented,  many  of  them,  with  the 
plain  purpose  of  giving  %  historical  existence  to  certain  of 
the  characters  mentioned  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey ;  or  they 
are  mere  blunders  of  which  the  source  is  innocent  and  obvi- 
ous.    That,  like  all  minstrels,  Homer  was  given  to  wander 
about  from  place  to  place  in  the  exercise  of  his  vocation,  is 
probable  enough  without  any  voucher,  and   appears  quite 
certain  from  the    extensive  and  accurate  geographical  in- 
formation displayed  in   his  works  ;  but  the   details  of  his 
travels  would  be  curiously  retained  in  no  man's  memory ; 
and  what  we  have  for  them  bears  all  the  marks  of  a  vulgar 


HOMEE.  189 

forgery.  The  much-bespoken  circumstance  of  his  being 
blind,  noticed  in  all  the  ancient  Lives,  if  implying  a  mere 
superinduced  misfortune,  and  not  a  congenital  defect,  might, 
as  a  matter  of  popular  tradition,  be  probable  enough,  were  the 
origin  of  the  story  not  too  plain  in  the  double  fact  that  a 
blind  poet  is  introduced  in  the  Odyssey,^  and  in  the  famous 
hymn  to  Apollo,  which  Thucydides  ^  and  other  ancients  ac- 
cepted as  the  productions  of  the  genuine  Homer.  This 
hymn,  indeed,  must  be  regarded  as  the  main  authority  of 
those  who  claim  Homer  as  a  Sciote ;  for  the  lines  run  ex- 
pressly, — 

Tr^Wf  avrjp,  oIkh  6s  Xicp  evi  naiKaXoeaai] . 

The  blind  old  man  who  dwells  in  Chios'  rocky  isle ; 

and  there  is  certainly  no  evidence  so  strong  in  favor  of 
Smyrna,  provided  only  it  could  be  proved  —  what  no  scholar 
now  dreams  —  that  these  lines  were  really  so  said  and  sung 
by  the  veritable  singer  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  But  after 
this  line  is  rejected,  there  remains  no  ground  for  the  claims 
of  Chios,  save  that  weak  one  expressly  mentioned  by 
Strabo,^  that  in  this  city  there  flourished  the  famous  guild  or 
brotherhood  of  minstrels  (of  whom  more  anon),  known  by 
the  name  of  the  Homeridae  ;  a  fact  of  no  more  power,  when 
critically  examined,  to  prove  that  Homer  himself  was  a 
Chiote,  than  the  fact  of  Calvinistic  theology  being  very 
dominant  in  Scotland,  would  prove  that  the  author  of  the 
doctrine  was  born  in  Edinburgh. 

The  age  of  Homer  is  a  matter  about  which  less  that  is 
satisfactory  can  be  stated  than  with  regard  to  his  country. 
That  if  not  a  Smyrniote  he  was  at  least  a  native  of  that 
part  of  Asia  Minor,  is  proved  not  merely  by  the  traditional 
evidence  just  adduced,  but  by  the  internal  evidence  of  the 
poems  themselves  —  by  their  rich  tone,  color,  and  style,  and 

1  Odyssey,  viii.  64.  ^History,  iii.  104.  »  Strabo,  XIV  p.  645. 


190  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

also  by  many  well-known  facts  relative  to  the  early  rise  and 
growth  of  poetic  literature  among  the  Greeks.  But  chro- 
nology is,  in  the  nature  of  the  thing,  a  matter  with  which 
popular  tradition  has  nothing  to  do:  and  the  internal  evi- 
dence of  the  poems  themselves  on  this  head,  though  strong 
enough,  perhaps,  to  exclude  certain  extreme  suppositions, 
affords  a  pretty  wide  range  to  a  merely  conjectural  chronol- 
ogy. Herodotus,  in  a  well-known  passage,^  places  Homer 
about  four  hundred  years  older  than  liimself ;  that  is,  in  the 
year  850  b.  c,  or  thereabout ;  Aristotle,  in  the  account 
given  by  him  in  the  legend  of  los,  makes  the  birth  of  Ho- 
mer contemporary  with  the  great  Ionic  migration  (1044 
B.  C.) ;  while  Dionysius  of  Samos,  the  cyclographer,  threw 
him  back  as  far  as  the  Trojan  War,  which  he  de- 
scribes. To  determine  exactly  between  these  contending 
dates,  and  at  least  a  dozen  more  given  in  a  very  full 
scheme  by  Lauer,^  is  of  course  hopeless ;  but  the  circum- 
stances of  the  case  warrant  us  in  refusing  to  allow  any  date 
for  Homer,  so  early  as  that  assumed  by  the  cyclographer, 
or  later  than  that  given  by  Herodotus.  For  such  an  ex- 
tensive collection  of  myths  as  that  connected  with  the  Trojan 
war  requires  time  to  grow  ;  and  Homer  manifestly  talks  of 
the  heroes  of  the  Iliad  as  belonging  to  some  age  not  alto- 
gether identical  with  his  own.  The  mingled  elements,  also, 
of  Ionic  and  -^olic  Hellenism,  which  appear  in  the  Ho- 
meric poems,  did  not  exist  in  Asia  Minor,  at  the  early  date 
supposed  by  Dionysius,  or  those  who  come  near  to  him. 
As  little,  on  the  other  hand,  can  we  go  beyond  Herodotus, 
in  bringing  Homer  nearer  to  the  date  of  the  Olympiads 
than  the  year  850,  for  the  very  uncertainty  in  which  the 
wisest  Greeks  were  as  to  the  age  of  the  poet,  proves  that  he 
lived  at  a  period  considerably  more  ancient  than  the  first 
year  (776  b.  c.)  of  their  recognized  national  chronology. 

1  History,  ii.,  53.  ^  Homerische  Poesie,  p.  124. 


HOMER.  191 

Perhaps  some  reader  may  have  been  content  that  we 
should  allude  to  these  disputed  points  in  a  manner  even 
more  perfunctory  than  we  have  done  ;  but  in  these  days  of 
rampant  historical  skepticism,  imported  wholesale  from  Ger- 
many, it  is  absolutely  necessary  to  make  some  attempt  to 
mark  distinctly  where  the  cloud-architecture  of  mere  imagi- 
nation ends,  and  the  mainland  of  actual  tradition,  hazy  and 
yet  indubitable,  commences.  In  reference  to  these  skeptical 
views  of  the  Germans,  we  cannot  avoid  noticing  here  that 
some  of  them  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  deny  the  exist- 
ence of  such  a  man  as  Homer  altogether;  and,  what  is 
of  more  consequence  to  us,  the  language,  which  some  of  the 
more  wild  of  that  sect  are  still  in  the  habit  of  using,  has 
been  adopted  by  some  of  our  own  scholars  whose  name  is 
sufficient  to  make  even  their  incidental  errors  dangerous. 
Mr.  Grote,  for  instance,  uses  the  following  language:  — 
"  The  name  of  Homer  — for  I  disallow  his  historical  per- 
sonality—  means  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  and  nothing 
else ; "  and  again,  "  Homer  is  no  individual  man,  but  the 
divine  or  heroic  father  of  the  Gentile  Homerids ; "  ^  that  is 
to  say,  while  the  whole  of  the  Greek  nation  believed  they 
had  once  had  a  great  epic  poet  to  whose  extraordinary 
genius,  as  to  a  natural  and  adequate  cause,  they  attributed 
their  two  great  epic  poems  (just  as  the  ordered  world  finds 
the  best  explanation  of  its  existence  in  a  God)  ;  we,  the 
learned  of  modern  times,  are  bound  to  doubt  whether  that 
poet  had  any  existence,  and  to  treat  these  poems  as  if  they 
were  not  productions  of  a  great  poetic  genius  at  all,  but  the 
creation  of  some  half  dozen  or  a  score  of  second-rate  rhym- 
ers, whose  names  no  person  ever  cared  to  know,  but  who 
were  cunning  enough  to  raise  themselves  into  a  fictitious 
historical  consequence  by  the  creation  of  a  symbolical  head 
of  their  corporation  called  Homer,  whom'  the  silly  world 

1  History,  Ho\.  ii.,  p.  179. 


192  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

has,  for  nearly  three  thousand  years,  been  willing  to  take 
for  a  substantial  reality !  Now,  it  ought  at  once  to  be 
granted  to  Mr.  Grote,  and  those  Germans  whose  nebulous 
notions  he  has,  in  this  matter,  imported,  that  there  was  a 
tendency  in  the  earliest  times  of  the  Greeks,  as  perhaps  of 
all  highly  imaginative  nations,  to  represent  in  the  historical 
form  certain  favorite  ideas  and  theories,  theological  and 
ethnological;  which  allegorical  or  mythical  narratives  a 
modern  reader  of  a  prosaic  temper  may  be  apt  to  mistake 
for  realities.  Of  the  Religious  myth  in  particular,  the  his- 
toric was  the  generally  accredited  form,  to  such  an  extent 
that  the  original  physico-theological  ideas  which  these  nar- 
ratives were  invented  to  convey,  are  now  but  dimly  discern- 
ible behind  the  motley  company  of  human  incarnations  by 
which  they  are  impersonated.  Nay,  more,  it  may  even  be 
true  in  some  cases,  according  to  a  favorite  notion  of  the 
Germans  (Uschold  and  others),  that  the  religious  symbols 
of  our  century  became  the  anthropomorphic  gods  of  another, 
and  dwindled  down  to  the  merely  human  heroes  of  a  third. 
Further,  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  beyond  the  sphere  of 
religion  the  practice  seems  to  have  prevailed  among  the 
Greeks  to  a  certain  extent  of  inventing  names  of  charac- 
ters, apparently  historical,  to  symbolize  the  origin  and  the 
connection  of  certain  notable  races  of  men.  Thus  Hellen 
in  whose  personality  the  most  critical  of  ancients  believed,^ 
is  taken  by  almost  all  modern  writers,  even  by  Clinton,  for 
a  mere  name  invented  as  a  symbol  of  the  common  national- 
ity of  the  people  whom  he  represented.  But  even  with 
regard  to  national  genealogies,  we  are  in  nowise  entitled  to 
assume  that  because  they  are  peculiarly  liable  to  forgery, 
therefore  no  national  genealogy  is  in  any  case  to  be  accepted 
to  be  true.  Much  less  are  we  to  make  a  general  rule  of 
evaporating  all  the  most  deeply-rooted  local  traditions  of  a 

1  See  Thucy*,  I.  3. 


HOMEK.  193 

country  into  mere  misty  imaginations  and  unsubstantial 
symbols,  and  to  assume  that  the  "  manufacture  of  fictitious 
personalities"  (Grote),  was  the  only  or  the  main  function 
of  the  popular  intellect  of  any  people,  at  any  stage  of  their 
civilization.  Man  is  a  real  creature,  and  he  deals  with 
realities ;  and  of  all  realities,  those  which  he  is  least  dis- 
posed to  lose  hold  of  are  the  great  men  whose  energy  fathers 
any  extraordinary  product  of  the  national  life,  and  whose 
name  marks  any  great  national  epoch.  In  conformity  with 
this  real  tendency  of  human  nature  we  find  that  in  all  popu- 
lar poetry  the  actions  of  famous  men  —  the  national  heroes 
—  form  a  much  more  prominent  element  than  symbolized 
religious  or  physical  philosophy  ;  *  and  the  periods  of  intel- 
lectual and  political  advancement  marked  by  such  names  as 
Homer  and  Theseus  are  precisely  those  in  which  a  great 
reality  would  be  more  powerful  to  seize  the  minds  of  men 
than  the  most  significant  symbol.  Extraordinary  and  even 
miraculous  stories  in  the  life  of  a  historical  personage  ought 
not  in  the  very  least  to  shake  our  credit  in  his  fundamental 
reality ;  for  it  is  precisely  because  his  reality  was  so  strik- 
ing and  so  overpowering  that  these  miraculous  stories  were 
invented,  and  naturally  found  credit.  The  Israelites  carried 
back  the  genealogy  of  their  nation  to  the  son  of  Isaac,  from 
wiiom  they  sprung.  Had  the  books  of  Moses,  with  all  their 
circumstantial  details  and  lifelike  reality  never  been  writ- 
ten, a  German  philologer  might  have  said  that  Jacob  was 
merely  a  symbol.  In  the  same  way,  the  Athenians  ascribed 
certain  great  political  changes  in  their  country  to  the  son  of 
JEgeus,  of  whom  various  wonderful  and  superhuman  stories 
are  told  ;  but  these  stories  no  more  justify  us  in  throwing  him 
into  the  limbo  of  symbols,  than  the  ridiculous  lies  about  Abra- 
ham and  the  other  patriarchs,  current  in  the  Koran  and  other 
Eastern  books,  would  entitle  us  to  disallow  the  historical 


1  See  some  admirable  remarks  in  Lauer,  p.  131-174. 
17 


.V',-' 

194  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

reality  of  the  father  of  the  faithful.  In  the  same  way  — 
though  there  are  some  things  of  a  plainly  mythical  nature 
in  the  traditional  legends  of  Homer  —  to  conclude  from 
^  these  that  Homer  himself  is  a  myth,  is  to  argue  with  the 
;!  precipitation  of  a  whim-intoxicated  German,  not  with  the 
\  deliberation  of  a  sober-minded  and  judicious  Englishman. 
'  Indeed,  it  is  only  doing  the  Germans  justice  to  state  that  the 
"  disallowance  of  the  personality  of  Homer,"  to  use  Mr. 
Grote's  phrase,  is  by  no  means  so  common  among  them  now 
as  in  the  first  fever  of  intemperate  Wolfian  enthusiasm  it 
might  have  been  without  offence.  William  Miiller,  the 
most  popular  champion  of  Wolfian  ideas,  says  distinctly  in 
his  Vorschule  (p.  51)  that "  we  are  not  called  to  question  the 
personal  existence  of  Homer  ; "  and  Professor  Welcker  (to 
whose  learned  labors  all  students  of  Homer  are  so  much 
indebted),  Nitsch,  C.  O.  Miiller,  Dr.  Ihne  (in  Smith's  IHc- 
tionary),  Baiimlein,  Lauer,  and  others  who  have  written 
recently  on  the  subject,  show  a  moderation  of  temper,  and  a 
soundness  of  historical  judgment,  very  far  removed  from 
what  we  are  accustomed  to  designate  as  "  German  extrava- 
gance." It  is  becoming  evident  to  a  thoughtful  observer 
that  even  among  that  most  speculative,  skeptical,  and,  intel- 
lectually speaking,  most  anarchical  nation  of  Europe,  the 
conflict  of  extreme  views  is  beginning  to  produce  its  natural 
results  in  the  recognition  of  the  great  human  realities  which 
lie  at  the  bottom  of  the  strong  though  unpurified  historical 
convictions  of  the  masses. 

So  much  for  the  Poet.  The  next  question  that  presents 
itself  in  connection  with  the  name  of  Homer,  is  that  of  the 
authenticity  of  the  works  which  go  under  his  name.  What 
security  have  we  that  the  poems  we  now  read  with  such  de- 
light and  instruction  are  the  identical  works  which  Aristotle 
analyzed,  which  Plato  denounced,  which  Thucydides  and 
Strabo  quoted  as  the  best  autliority  for  some  of  the  earliest 
and  most  important  facts  in  Greek  history  and  topography  ? 


HOMER.  195 

What  guarantee  further  that  the  works  which  the  great 
writers  of  the  classic  age  of  Greece,  received  as  genuine 
works  of  the  great  Ionian  bard,  actually  were  so ;  and  how 
far  they  might  not  have  been  made  subject  to  various  inter- 
polations and  mutilations  in  the  thi'ee  or  four  centuries  that 
elapsed  between  the  heroic  age,  when  they  were  compared, 
and  the  historic  age,  when  we  find  them  made  the  subject 
of  literary  study  and  criticism  ?  The  importance  of  these 
questions  will  appear  the  more  strongly,  when  we  bear  in 
mind  that  the  celebrity  of  Homer  naturally  led  to  the  na- 
tional practice  of  stamping  with  his  name  many  poetical 
works  of  a  popular  character,  in  which  the  stern  tests 
applied  by  a  severe  criticism,  refuse  to  find  any  marks  of  so 
illustrious  a  paternity.  Prominent  among  these  are  the 
Homeric  hymns,  treated  as  authentic  by  Thucydides,  and 
published  as  undoubted  works  of  the  great  bard  in  the 
Editio  Princeps,  and  other  notable  editions  by  modern 
scholars.  Of  the  same  kind  are  the  Cypria  already  men- 
tioned, of  the  contents  of  which  a  short  account  is  given  by 
Proclus,  the  grammarian.  To  Homer  also  was  very  gen- 
erally attributed  by  the  ancients  the  Colopherian  poem 
called  Margites  ;  and  the  Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  Mice  is 
an  example  of  one  of  the  many  Ttdiyna,  or  humorous  popu- 
lar pieces,  with  the  composition  of  which  the  singer  of  the 
wrath  of  Achilles  is  supposed  to  have  amused  his  mighty 
mind  in  his  hours  of  relaxation.  With  regard  to  all  these, 
it  may  be  sufficient  to  state,  that  the  ancients  themselves 
were  very  far  from  exhibiting  a  serious  agreement  as  to 
their  authorship  ;  and  their  being  attributed  to  Homer  must 
be  viewed  as  rather  a  floating  popular  belief,  than  a  strong 
national  conviction.  Such  being  their  character,  it  could 
not  be  expected  that  they  should  stand  muster  before  the 
scrutinizing  glance  of  modern  criticism,  and  the  skeptical 
analysis  of  the  Germans.  In  talking  of  Homeric  poems  we 
must,  therefore,  remove  these  minor  works  altogether  from 


196  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

our  view ;  but  the  fact  of  their  having  been  for  a  long 
period  so  generally  received  as  genuine  works  of  the  poet, 
leads  us  to  treat  with  the  greatest  consideration  the  caution 
of  those  who  demand  the  severest  proof  for  the  real  author- 
ship of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey.  Now,  with  regard  to 
these  two  great  works,  there  is,  in  the  first  place,  not  the 
slightest  reason  to  doubt  that  we  possess  and  use  them,  so 
far  as  the  contents  and  the  text  are  concerned,  exactly  as 
they  were  possessed  and  used  by  the  Greeks  of  the  classic 
ages  ;  and  with  regard  to  their  authorship,  the  faith  which 
we  have  that  these  identical  works  were  the  genuine  works 
of  the  great  Ionian  epopoeist,  was  the  general  faith  of  the 
whole  ancient  world,  both  Greek  and  Roman;  and  in  the 
case  of  the  Iliad,  at  least,  (for  there  were  some  difficulties 
started  by  a  few  curious  inquirers  with  regard  to  the 
Odyssey,)  a  faith  for  centuries  unshaken  by  a  single  breath 
of  contradiction.  That  the  Iliad,  which  we  now  read,  is 
substantially  the  Iliad  of  Pindar  and  of  Plato,  can  be 
proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  any  sane  man,  exactly  in  the 
same  way  that  the  Christian  Scriptures,  read  now  in  the 
Christian  churches,  are  proved  to  be  substantially  the  same 
as  those  expounded  by  the  earliest  bishops,  and  sanctioned 
by  the  most  authoritative  councils  of  the  church.  To  the 
Greeks,  Homer  was  in  fact  a  Bible,  and  guarded  with  all 
the  care  and  all  the  piety  that  belongs  to  such  a  book ;  a 
fact  which  at  once  explains  the  extravagant,  and  to  our  feel- 
ing, illiberal  zeal  with  which  Plato  denounces  it  in  his  ideal 
polity,  and  at  the  same  time  puts  into  our  hands  a  guarantee 
of  the  surest  and  most  sacred  kind  for  the  general  authen- 
ticity of  the  poems  as  we  now  read  them.  No  person  who 
is  even  superficially  read  in  the  Greek  classics  can  fail  to 
have  observed  how  constantly  all  writers  of  note,  from  the 
severe  and  stern  Aristotle,  to  the  light  and  sportive  Lucian, 
refer  to  Homer  as  to  a  writer  of  whom  a  universal  knowl- 
edge might   be   presupposed  in  all   their   readers,  and   to 


HOMER.  197 

whom  a  universal  respect  was  paid.  The  consequence  of 
this  frequent  reference  is,  that  there  is  no  writer  of  an- 
tiquity of  whom  we  are  more  sure  that  we  possess  his  genu- 
ine words  as  current  in  the  mouths  of  the  ancients,  than  we 
are  with  regard  to  the  author  of  the  Uiad  and  Odyssey. 
But  more  than  this.  In  the  time  of  the  Ptolomies,  and 
when  the  productive  power  of  Greek  literature  had  begun 
to  faint  and  die  away,  there  was  a  special  band  of  learned 
critics  and  commentators,  who  made  it  their  business  to  col- 
late the  various  recensions  of  the  Homeric  epics,  and  to 
transmit  their  text  to  us  with  as  much  conscientious  fidelity 
as  was  possible.  Prominent  among  these  were  Aristarchus 
and  Zenodotus,  of  whom  the  first  has  transmitted  his  name 
to  modern  times  as  a  popular  appellative  for  the  literary 
man  who  exercises  the  higher  sort  of  documental  criticism 
as  a  vocation  ;  and  not  only  do  we  know  that  such  men  ex- 
isted, and  exercised  their  philologic  care  on  the  great 
national  treasure  of  the  Homeric  text,  but  we  have  in  the 
Venetian  scholia,  first  published  from  the  St.  Mark's  library 
by  Villoison  (1788),  a  series  of  notices  of  their  method  of 
critical  procedure,  and  a  list  of  their  asterisks  and  obelisks, 
sufficient  to  dispel  all  doubt  as  to  the  unadulterated  trans- 
mission of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  at  least  from  the  pe- 
riod when  letters  began  to  be  a  study  and  an  occupation 
in  Greece.  But  when  did  this  period  begin.?  and  what 
have  we  to  say  for  the  nature  of  the  guarantees  of  authen- 
ticity, whatever  they  were,  that  existed  before  this  period  ? 
These  are  really  serious  questions,  the  answers  to  which 
have  raised  difficulties  that  have  made  wise  men  pause  and 
foolish  men  stumble,  not  without  observation.  Oh  all  hands 
it  is  allowed  that  Pisistratus,  the  well-known  Athenian 
tyrant  (b.  c.  560),  was  the  first,  so  far  at  least  as  Athens  is 
concerned,  to  collect  together  the  various  books  or  rhapso- 
dies of  the  Homeric  epics,  which  were  generally  sung  or 
recited  separately,  and  to  arrange  and  publish  them  —  to 
17* 


198  NEW    BIOGEAPHIES. 

use  a  modern  phrase  —  in  the  form  in  which  they  now  ex- 
ist. Pisistratus,  therefore,  or  rather  his  literary  coadjutors, 
among  whom  Onomacritus  is  prominently  named,  must  be 
regarded  as  our  first  historical  guarantee  for  the  text  of  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  as  we  now  possess  it ;  but  the  details 
of  his  literary  labors  are  unfortunately  not  in  the  least 
known  to  us ;  so  from  this  point  backward  we  are  left  to 
conjecture,  to  historical  probabilities  and  internal  evidence, 
and  to  the  hundred  and  one  small  skeptical  doubts  and 
skeptical  solutions  of  those  doubts,  which  will  never  cease 
to  exercise  the  wits  of  those  who  are  born  to  torment  them- 
selves in  this  way. 

The  question  whether  the  Iliad  as  arranged  by  Pisistratus 
was,  both  in  point  of  matter  and  arrangement,  exactly  the 
same  as  the  Iliad,  of  which  Homer  was  the  reputed  author, 
is  a  question  that  in  the  nature  of  the  case  admits  of  no  per- 
fectly satisfactory  answer.  Absolutely  the  same  of  course 
in  the  nature  of  human  things  it  cannot  be :  for  even  the 
Christian  Scriptures,  guarded  as  they  have  been  by  the 
double  sanction  of  individual  and  corpoi*ate  authority,  have 
not  been  transmitted  through  eighteen  centuries  of  literary 
record  without  being  made  subject  to  several  very  notable 
interpolations  ;  nor  can  it  even  be  said  that  any  man  at  the 
present  day  can  feel  the  same  degree  of  certainty  with  re- 
gard to  the  text  of  Homer  that  he  does  with  regard  to  that 
of  Milton,  Tasso,  Dante,  or  even  Virgil.  Wliy  ?  Not  only 
because  of  the  greater  lapse  of  time ;  for  in  a  question  of 
documentary  criticism  this  is  often  a  point  of  comparatively 
small  moment ;  hut  because  of  the  different  conditions  under 
which  these  works  were  composed,  and  the  different  mediums 
through  which,  in  their  earliest  stage,  they  were  transmitted. 
We  read  of  no  Pisistratus  that  first  collected  the  scat- 
tered books  of  the  -^neid ;  the  very  MS.  which  Dante 
gloried  in,  or  something  as  good,  is  no  doubt  lying  in  the 
Grand  Duke's  library  in  Florence  at  the  present  hour.     In 


HOMEK.  199 

the  case  of  these  poets  people  may  be  vexed  with  various 
readings  and  doubtful  lines,  —  such  questions  as  curious 
editors  will  raise  even  with  regard  to  modem  Scotts  and 
Byrons  ;  but  there  is  no  talk  about  cutting  out  whole  books, 
and  the  strange  process  with  which  learned  Germans  are  so 
familiar,  of  restoring  a  great  poem  to  its  integrity  by  de- 
priving it  of  some  of  its  most  beautiful  parts.  Let  us  en- 
deavor, then,  to  fix  a  steady  eye  on  the  real  state  of  the 
Homeric  text  at  the  time  when  it  was  collected  by  Pisis- 
tratus.  What  reason  have  we  to  suppose  that  it  was  then 
to  any  considerable  extent  interpolated,  or  changed  in  any 
way  from  its  original  condition  as  it  came  from  the  mouth 
of  Homer?  The  answer  to  this  question  depends  upon 
another.  Who  were  the  conservators  of  that  trust,  previous 
to  the  time  of  Pisistratus ;  and  what  safeguards  were  they  pro- 
vided with  against  those  invasions  of  spurious  matter  to  which 
all  works  of  extensive  circulation,  and  general  popularity, 
are  especially  subject  ?  The  conservators  of  the  trust  are, 
in  the  first  place,  the  national  doidot,  minstrels  or  bards,  who, 
like  Homer  himself,  made  a  profession  of  singing  songs  and 
epic  poems  for  the  amusement  of  the  people ;  and  when 
these  had  begun  to  wane,  they  were  succeeded  by  the  rhap- 
sodists  or  popular  reciters,  who  performed  the  same  func- 
tions, but  with  less  original  genius  and  less  social  dignity  iu 
an  age  when  historians,  and  orators,  and  philosophers,  and 
rhetoricians,  had  usurped  many  of  the  functions  that  had 
originally  been  exercised  by  the  doiSog.  *Now  it  is  of  im- 
mense importance  in  the  criticism  of  Homer  to  ascertain 
clearly  if  possible  what  was  the  moral  position  of  the  origi- 
nat  minstrel's  profession  with  regard  to  the  great  poet ;  for 
on  this  depends  the  likelihood  of  their  eiih€%  loosely  inter- 
polating or  conscientiously  respecting  the  integrity  of  his 
works.  That  they  cannot  have  felt  the  same  religious  sort 
of  respect  for  him  that  arose  in  the  Greeks  of  a  later  age, 
seems  pretty  evident ;  they  were  minstrels  by  trade  as  well 


200  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

as  he,  and  could  only  look  upon  him  in  the  exercise  of  their 
profession  as  primus  inter  pares.  Nevertheless,  they  did 
respect  him  very  much  ;  of  which  we  have  ample  evidence 
in  the  existence  of  the  fimous  guild  or  institution  of  poets 
of  Chios,  known  by  the  name  of  the  Homeridce,  or  sons  of 
Homer,  concerning  whom  we  have  the  most  distinct  testi- 
mony in  Harpocration.  Whether  any  of  the  actual  descend- 
ants of  the  poet  fonned  the  original  nucleus  of  this  fraternity 
we  cannot  tell ;  but  its  existence  under  that  designation  is 
ample  proof  of  the  extraordinary  respect  in  which  Homer 
continued  to  be  held  in  the  parts  of  Asia  nearest  to  his  birth- 
place, and  affords  a  sufficient  practical  guarantee  that  the 
professional  minstrels  who  were  incorporated  under  this 
name  would  not,  from  mere  rash  conceit,  be  inclined  to  tam- 
per with  the  real  tradition  of  the  Smyrnaean  muse  of  which 
they  were  the  select  depositaries.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  a  poem  like  the  Iliad,  made  not 
to  be  read  as  a  continuous  book,  but  to  be  sung  in  separate 
parts  for  the  public  amusement,  was  peculiarly  liable  to  have 
such  additions  made  to  it  or  variations  as  the  occasion  might 
require.  Of  this  our  own  ballads^  supply  everywhere 
abundant  proof,  the  existing  version  of  which  is  often  pieced 
together  from  a  variety  of  different  texts,  presenting  all  sorts 
of  deficiencies  and  redundancies.  That  something  of  this 
kind  should  not  have  taken  place  with  regard  to  the  Ho- 
meric poems  in  general  circulation  through  the  scattered 
tribes  of  the  Greeks,  would  have  been  positively  miracu- 
lous ;  and  we  must  suppose  that  the  principal  business  of 
Pisistratus,  in  collecting  these  poems,  was  not,  as  some  have 
Strangely  supposed,  to-preate  an  order  which  never  existed, 
but  to  fix  ai^  order  which  was  in  danger  of  being  lost. 
Whether  in  doing  so  he  had  the  advantage  of  any  complete 
correct  text  derived  from  the    Homeridae  of  Chios,  with 

1  See  Chambers'  Songs  and  Ballads  of  Scotland,  p.  106,  note. 


HOMEB.  201 

which  to  compose  and  correct  the  scattered  rhapsodies  in 
popular  currency,  we  cannot  say ;  but  it  is  not  at  all  un- 
likely ;  —  at  any  rate  he  would  have  little  difficulty  in  re- 
storing the  original  arrangement  of  the  books,  partly  because 
that  order  in  the  generality  of  cases  shines  out  manifestly 
from  the  inherent,  character  of  the  plot,  and  the  progress  of 
the  story,  partly  because  there  could  not  fail  to  exist  among 
the  more  literate  and  accomplished  of  the  rhapsodists  some 
one  who  could  recite  by  memory  not  merely  single  books, 
but  the  whole  concatenation  of  books,  as  the  Homeridae  of 
Chios  had  received  them  from  their  great  father.  Most 
assuredly,  as  has  been  insisted  on  both  by  Baiimlein  and 
Grote,  he  n^ver  could  have  set  himself  seriously  to  make 
extensive  modern  interpolations  in  poems,  the  contents  of 
which  were  well  known  over  the  whole  of  Greece,  and  had 
in  Athens  been  made  the  subject  of  a  special  public  regula- 
tion by  their  great  lawgiver,  Solon.* 

In  the  view  here  given  of  the  respective  functions  of  the 
Homeridae,  and  of  Pisistratus,  in  the  transmission  of  the 
Homeric  poems,  we  have  said  nothing  about  the  famous 
question,  whether  the  art  of  writing  was  known  in  Homer's 
time  ?  because  a  little  reflection  will  show  that  this  question 
has  really  very  little  bearing  on  the  genuineness  of  the  poems 
as  we  now  possess  them,  and  besides  is  a  question  that  does 
not  admit  of  a  satisfactory  answer.  At  the  first  blush,  in- 
deed, when  a  modern  who  is  the  slave  of  pen  and  ink,  hears 
it  stated  that  in  all  likelihood  the  great  bard  of  the  Iliad 
could  neither  read  nor  write,  he  is  apt  to  feel  very  much 
as  if  the  whole  foundation  for  his  critical  faith  in  the  poet 
was  removed  from  beneath  his  feet,  and  there  was  no 
longer  any  ground  for  him  to  stand  on.  How  many  an  elo- 
quent modern  speaker  might  be  struck  dumb  if  pen,  ink,  and 
paper  were  suddenly  removed  from  the  category  of  things 

1  See  Diog.  Laert.,  in  Solon,  9. 


202  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

that  be !  But  they  managed  these  matters  difFerently  on 
Parnassus  and  Hehcon  in  the  days  when  Memory  was  the 
mother  of  the  Muses,  and  the  Muses  could  sing  sweetly 
without  help  from  a  goose  quill.  We  have  the  most  distinct 
testimony  of  Juhus  Caesar  (b.  c.  vi.  14),  to  the  effect  "that 
the  pupils  of  the  Druids  learn  by  heart  a  great  number  of 
verses ;  and  some  continue  twenty  years  in  a  course  of  in- 
struction. Nor  do  they  think  it  right  to  commit  their  doc- 
trines to  writing,  though  in  other  matters  they  use  the  Greek 
alphabet.  This  they  appear  to  do  for  two  reasons  ;  first,  that 
they  may  not  make  their  religious  mysteries  too  common  and 
profane  hy  general  publication,  and  again,  that  they  may  not 
weaken  the  power  of  memory  in  their  scholars'  by  teaching 
them  to  trust  to  written  notes  ;  for  nothing  is  more  common 
than  that  the  abundance  of  literary  helps  teaches  persons  to 
remit  their  exertions  in  committing  their  knowledge  to  mem- 
ory." This  remarkable  passage  reveals  to  us  in  the  most 
striking  manner  the  real  secret  of  the  transmission  of  the 
Homeric  poems  without  the  help  of  written  manuscripts ; 
the  memory  of  the  minstrels  was  not  more  uncertain,  but 
more  true  and  trustworthy  for  this  very  reason,  that  they 
were  not  accustomed  to  depend  for  the  faithful  recollections 
of  the  poems  which  they  recited,  upon  a  leaf  of  papyrus  or 
a  library  itself.  In  estimating  the  memorial  powers  of  these 
men  we  must  never  forget  not  only  that  they  exercised  their 
art  under  intellectual  conditions  exactly  the  reverse  of  those 
which  now  exist,  but  also  that  they  had  no  other  business  or 
interests  by  which  to  distract  their  attention,  and  so  could 
perform  certain  feats  with  ease,  that  bear  the  same  relation 
to  our  common  exercises  of  memory,  that  tumbling  and 
rope-dancing  do  to  common  walking.  It  is  always  in  our 
power,  by  exclusive  and  persevering  exercise  of  a  favorite 
faculty  in  a  favorite  sphere,  to  perform  apparent  prodigies. 
We  shall  therefore  readily  disabuse  ourselves  of  the  super- 
ficial  modern  notion    that  written   memoranda   are   neces- 


HOMEK.  203 

sary  to  the  faithfulness  of  versified  tradition  ;  the  "  wonder  " 
as  it  has  been  called  by  Grote,  of  the  "  preservation  "  of 
such  long  poems  fi'om  such  early  ages  \Yill  become  part  of 
the  common  intellectual  drill  of  an  age  eloquent  without  pa- 
per, and  poetical  without  ink ;  and  the  question  will  only 
remain,  as  a  matter  of  legitimate  curiosity  with  regard  to  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey,  whether  their  author  was  unacquainted 
witn  those  useful  arts  of  literary  conservation,  the  knowl- 
edge of  which  is  in  our  days  justly  accounted  a  necessary 
element  in  the  lowest  stages  of  popular  education.  Now 
with  regard  to  the  use  of  lettei's  in  Greece,  the  general  voice 
of  Hellenic  antiquity  pointed  to  Cadmus  as  having  imported 
these  cunning  symbols  fi'om  Phoenicia  at  a  period  far  an- 
tecedent to  the  age  of  Homer,  or  even  the  supposed  date 
of  the  Trojan  War ;  and  this  tradition  is  consistent  not  only 
with  the  philosophical  analysis  of  their  letters  of  the  alpha- 
bet, but  with  the  then  general  state  of  the  civilization,  and 
the  admitted  intercourse  between  Asia  and  the  West,  as 
having  taken  place  in  various  forms  at  a  very  early  period 
of  the  history  of  the  world.  There  is  every  probability, 
therefore,  in  favor  of  the  belief  that  letters,  in  some  shape 
or  other,  were  known  in  Greece,  at  whatever  date,  between 
the  Trojan  War  and  the  year  850,  which  may  be  assumed 
as  most  convenient  for  the  age  of  Homer.  But  from  this 
probable  belief  with  regard  to  tMi  epoch  of  the  knowledge 
of  letters  in  Greece,  the  distance  to  a  reasonable  conviction, 
with  regard  to  the  practice  of  Homer  himself  in  composing 
and  preserving  his  poems,  is  very  great,  and  not  lightly  to 
be  overlooked.  That  letters,  when  first  introduced,  were 
used  only  in  great  public  matters,  and  for  inscriptions  in 
wood,  Kone,  lead,  and  other  heavy  materials,  not  for  writing 
a  long  concatenation  of  poetic  rhapsodies,  is  conformable 
to  the  nature  of  the  thing,  and  to  every  testimony  on  the 
subject.  According  to  the  usual  slow  progress  of  human 
aflTairs,  three  centuries  at  least  may  well  have  been  required 


204  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

to  transfer  letters  from  the  rare  service  of  temple-porticos 
and  monumental  pillars,  to  the  common  use  of  literary  con- 
servation ;  so  that,  even  assuming  the  use  of  letters  for 
public  purposes  in  the  days  of  Homer,  the  probability  may 
be  considered  very  small  that  they  were  actually  used  by 
the  poet  or  his  immediate  successors  for  any  merely  literary 
purpose.  This  probability  becomes  even  less,  when  we 
consider  that  there  is  not  a  single  allusion  in  the  wSole 
forty-eight  books  of  the  two  poems  to  writing  or  books,  as 
a  part  of  the  civilization  which  they  describe  ;  ^  and  though 
this  in  itself  were  no  conclusive  argument,  as  any  poet  who 
uses  pen  and  ink  is  not  even  in  these  days  obliged  to  make 
his  heroes  do  so,  yet  taken  in  connection  with  the  general 
character  of  the  poems,  and  the  circumstances  of  the  time, 
as  ascertained  by  historical  analogy,  it  is  in  nowise  to  be 
looked  on  as  an  altogether  indifferent  circumstance. 

So  far  we  have  confined  our  remarks  to  the  external  aids 
and  authorities,  by  means  of  which  the  poet  and  his  works 
are  in  the  first  place  commended  to  our  attention.  It  now  re- 
mains from  this  general  basis  of  outward  historical  proba- 
bilities and  presumptions,  to  direct  our  inquiry  into  the 
character  and  genius  of  the  poems  themselves,  and  from  this 
investigation  either  to  transmute  our  probabilities  into  cer- 
tainties, or  throw  them  aside  as  unsupported,  or  contradicted 
by  a  higher,  and  the  highest  sort  of  evidence.  For  no 
mere  array  of  authorities,  however  venerable,  can  in  the 
long  run  support  an  incoherent  tradition  that  carries  its  own 
contradiction  in  its  face.  This  eternal  superiority  of  imma- 
nent and  inherent,  to  merely  accredited  evidence,  has,  since 
Bentley's  famous  dissection  of  the  epistles  of  Phalaris,  ban- 
ished from  the  shelves  of  authentic  classical  traditiofir,  many 
a  hoary  tome  that  had  long  held  an  honored  place  there, 
along  with  the  most  venerated  worthies  of  the  Greek  and 

1  The  af/fiara  Tarypdi  in  Iliad,  vi.  168,  is  ambiguous. 


HOMER.  205 

Roman  pantheon.  How  stands  the  case  with  regard  to  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey'?  Are  these  works  what  they  have  for 
nearly  three  thousand  years  been  reputed  to  be  —  the  great 
poems  of  a  great  old  Ionian  poet  —  or  do  they  bear  the  trick 
of  forgery  on  their  face,  and  show  the  patchwork  of  a  bung- 
ling fabricator  on  the  phylacteries  of  their  outer  garment  ? 

The  severe  ordeal  which  the  Homeric  poems,  in  the. way 
of  internal  analysis,  have  undergone,  takes  its  rise  in  modern 
times  from  the  publication  of  a  famous  edition  by  F.  A.  Wolf, 
a  German  professor  of  extraordinary  talent,  in  the  year  1795. 
This  scholar,  partly  following  the  bent  of  his  own  genius, 
partly,  no  doubt,  carried  along  by  the  general  revolutionary 
tendencies  of  the  age,  did,  in  the  Prolegomena  prefixed  to 
his  edition,  set  forth  an  extremely  skeptical  doctrine  with 
regard  to  Homer  and  his  poetry,  with  such  rare  learning, 
vigor,  and  taste,  that  it  was  impossible  for  German  minds  to 
resist  him ;  and  though  the  whole  tendency  and  love  of 
English  scholarship  runs  in  a  directly  contrary  direction,*  as 

^  It  is  remarkable  that  the  germs  of  the  Wolfian  theory  travelled 
from  this  country  over  to  Germany;  and  Wolf,  in  his  Prolegomena, 
honestly  recognizes  Wood  and  Bentley  as  valuable  pionfeers  of  the 
doctrine  which  he  so  eloquently  enforces.  Bentley's  well-known 
utterance  with  regard  to  Homer  is  found  in  his  Remarks  on  a  late  Dis- 
course on  Free  Thinking,  by  Phileleutherus  Lipsiensis  (  Works  by  Dyce, 
iii.  304).  "  To  prove  Homer's  universalPlnowledge,  our  author  says, 
'he  designed  his  poem  for  eternity  to  please  and  instruct  mankind;'  but 
take  my  word  for  it,  poor  Homer,  in  those  circumstances  and  early 
times,  had  never  such  aspiring  thoughts.  He  wrote  a  sequel  of  songs 
and  rhapsodies  to  be  sung  by  himself  for  small  earnings  and  good  cheer,  at 
festivals  and  other  days  of  merriment;  the  Iliad  he  made  for  the  men, 
and  the  Odyssey  for  the  other  sex ; "  from  which  passage  thrown  out 
incidentally,  however,  be  it  remembered,  and  not  deliberately  meas- 
ured in  eveiy  word,  one  thing  seems  plain,  that  by  using  the  word 
"  Sequel,"  the  great  critic  gives  us  plainly  to  understand  that  he  held 
there  was  an  essential  unity  of  plan  going  through  both  works,  which 
puts  him  plainly  out  of  the  roll  of  thorough-going  Wolfians,  and 
advocates  of  what  Nitsch  calls  the  Klein-lieder-theorie.  Among  other 
18 


206  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  great  work  of  Clinton  sufficiently  testifies,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  beyond  the  pale  of  mere  Oxonians  the  Wolfian 
views  have  exercised  no  small  influence  in  forming  the  criti- 
cal opinions  of  some  of  the  best  educated  minds  in  England. 
The  critical  spirit  of  the  age,  the  skeptical  researches  of 
Niebuhr  with  regard  to  Roman  history,  and  the  increasing 
action  of  German  scholarship  on  the  learning  of  this  coun- 
try, have  all  tended  to  produce  this  result.  The  theory  of 
Wolf,  founded  not  merely  on  a  minute  critical  analysis  of 
the  poems,  but,  as  he  imagined  also,  on  satisfactory  external 
evidence,  was  to  the  effect,  that  whether  a  great  poet  called 
Homer  ever  existed  or  not,  the  two  great  poems  generally 
attributed  to  him  are  no  homogeneous  works  created  by  the 
plastic  power  of  a  presiding  genius,  but  mere  aggregates  of 
various  origin,  gathered  together  from  the  great  floating  ele- 
ment of  popular  poetry  in  Greece,  and  cunningly  licked 
into  shape  by  certain  expert  literary  artizans  in  the  days  of 
Pisistratus.  Now,  with  regard  to  the  external  evidence  on 
which  this  paradox  is  founded,  it  seems  at  this  hour  gener- 
ally agreed,  even  among  the  Germans,  that  the  authorities 
relied  on  by  Wolf  do  in  nowise  support  his  extreme  con- 
clusion, do  not  in  fact  go  beyond  the  historical  statement  of 
the  matter  which  we  have  just  made,  —  a  statement  per- 
fectly consistent  both  with  the  personal  existence  of  one 
great  poet,  and  the  or^Riizing  action  of  his  presiding  spirit 
on  the  two  great  poems  that  go  by  his  name.  The  advo- 
cates of  the  Wolfian  theory,  therefore,  are  now  driven  to 
confine  themselves  to  a  series  of  arguments  drawn  from  tlu; 
minute  critical  examination  of  the  text  of  the  poems,  by 
means  of  which  they  think  they  have  evolved  such  an 
imposing  array  of  inconsistencies,  as  is  utterly  iocompatible 

notable  anticipators  of  Wolf's  theory,  the  case  of  the  Neapolitan  phi- 
losojjher  Vico,  has  often  been  mentioned.  See  Scienza  nuova  Uhro 
terzo;  ddla  discoverta  del  vero  Omero,  first  published  in  the  year  1725, 
and  repeatedly  reprinted. 


HOMER.  207 

with  the  belief  in  the  presiding  control  of  one  great  mind. 
Among  those  who  have  distinguished  themselves  in  this 
field  of  what  we  may  call  Homeric  histology,  is  Carl  Lach- 
mann,  lately  deceased,  a  Berlin  professor  of  great  erudition 
and  subtlety,  as  attested  by  well-known  works  in  various 
departments  of  philological  investigation.  It  behooves  us, 
therefore,  to  inquire,  on  what  presumptions  and  on  what 
principles  the  analytical  criticism  of  this  school  is  founded ; 
and  when  we  have  shown^that  these  presumptions  require 
to  be  inverted,  and  that  these  principles  are  altogether  false 
or  altogether  misapplied,  we  may  spare  our  readers  the 
trouble  of  a  minute  and  curious  refutation  of  the  individual 
objections.  Those  who  wish  to  pursue  the  question  into  its 
details,  may  consult  the  little  tract  of  Lachmann,^  or  the 
English  work  of  Colonel  Mure,^  a  book  replete  with  the 
best  German  learning,  and,  what  is  of  greater  consequence, 
animated  throughout  with  a  spirit  of  good-sense,  and  a  fine 
poetical  appreciation,  which  very  few  Germans  can  boast  of. 
In  an  investigation  of  this  kind  the  presumptions  with 
which  a  man  starts,  though  not  always  distinctly  set  forth, 
are  of  the  utmost  consequence  in  determining  his  procedure. 
The  false  historical  presumptions  from  which  Wolf  pro- 
ceeded, naturally  led  him  to  seek  for  flaws  in  the  texture  of 
the  Homeric  poems ;  and  it  is  manifest  that  even  Mr.  Grote, 
who  justly  considers  the  extreme  Wolfian  theory  as  quite 
untenable,  in  propounding  his  wild  scheme  of  resolving  the 
Iliad  into  two  distinct  parts,  has  been  influenced,  partly  by 
his  desire  to  mitigate  what  he  calls  "  the  wonder "  of  the 
creation,  and  the  preservation  of  two  such  long  continuous 
poems,  bearing  the  stamp  of  one  mind,  in  an  age  when  writ- 
mg  was  altogether  unknown.     That  there  are  no  external 

1  Betrachtungen  iiber  Homer's  llias,  Berlin,  1847. 

2  A  Critical  History  of  the  Language  and  Literature  of  Ancient  Greece, 
second  edition,  London,  1854,  vols.  i.  and  ii. 


208  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

historical  presumptions  of  this  kind  we  have  already  at- 
tempted to  show  ;  a  presumption  of  a  different  kind  we  shall 
now  state.  It  is  not  to  be  presumed  that  Homer  would  be 
anxiously  accurate  about  the  mere  articulation  or  joint-work 
of  his  epic  poems,  for  several  reasons.  First,  because  he 
was  a  poet,  and  aimed,  as  all  true  poets  do,  mainly  at  pro- 
ducing an  effect  on  the  feelings  and  imaginations  of  his 
hearers,  not  on  their  mere  cognitive  capacity.  Small  mis- 
takes in  incidental  matters  taken  cognizance  of  by  the  curi- 
ous understanding  only,  might,  without  offence,  be  committed 
by  a  great  singer  of  poetry,  as  they  would  certainly  not  be 
observed  by  a  healthy-minded  hearer ;  and  that  mistakes  of 
this  kind  actually  have  been  made,  and  are  even  now  daily 
made  by  poets  and  novelists  of  the  highest  order,  has  been 
shown  by  Colonel  Mure  in  the  most  effective  manner. 
Second,  because  he  was  a  popular  poet,  a  wandering  minstrel 
with  a  lyre  in  his  hand,  as  he  is  truly  represented  in  all  the 
old  biographies,  and  not  a  learned  Southey  sitting  in  a  li- 
brai-y,  with  books,  and  desk,  and  pen,  and  ink,  printers'  proof 
sheets,  publishers'  quarterly  reviews,  and  every,6ort  of  liter- 
ary apparatus  of  the  newest  and  most  approved  description. 
In  judging  of  the  Iliad  as  a  whole,  we  must  never  forget, 
though  it  seems  to  be  very  generally  forgotten,  that  it  was 
not,  could  not  be,  Homer's  immediate  object  to  compose  a 
great  whole,  for  the  plain  and  simple  reason  that  he  had 
comparatively  few  opportunities  of  using  such  a  whole.  His 
art,  therefore,  was  to  concatenate  a  series  of  parts,  which, 
while  they  might  be  used  with  effect  on  a  few  great  festive 
occasions  as  a  whole,  were  meant  to  produce  their  general 
and  most  appreciable  effect,  in  the  shape  of  parts  either 
absolutely  complete  in  themselves,  or  admitting  of  being 
easily  supplemented  by  the  indwelling  traditional  lore, 
which  the  poet  could  legitimately  presuppose  in  the  minds  of 
his  hearers.  Something  analogous  to  this  we  have  in  the 
great  historical  plays  of  Shakspeare,  consisting  of  several 


HOMER.  209 

parts,  in  any  of  wliich  if  there  happened  to  be  some  small 
inconsistencies  with  the  other  parts,  none  but  a  curious  per- 
son making  a  business  of  criticism  would  ever  notice  it,  as 
the  parts,  though  connected  in  conception,  are  so  constructed 
as  to  give  the  impression  of  completeness,  where  they  are 
represented  as  separate  wholes.  If  this  point  be  duly  con- 
sidered, and  there  is  nothing  more  certain  or  more  duly 
attested  in  the  history  of  these  poems,  the  weakness  of  a 
great  number  of  the  objections  made  by  Lachmann  and 
Grote  to  the  concatenation  of  the  Iliad  will  instantly  appear. 
The  tenth  book  for  instance  —  that  in  which  the  midnight 
expedition  of  Diomedes  and  Ulysses  is  described  —  ha*,  it 
is  said,  no  necessary  connection  with  the  parts  of  the  poem 
that  precede  or  follow,  and  might  be  cut  out  without  injury. 
Of  course ;  because  it  was  the  object  of  the  poet  to  string 
together  a  number  of  little  wholes,  originally  independent, 
that  they  might  still  remain  little  wholes,  and  yet  become 
parts  of  a  great  whole  —  an  exquisite  trick  of  art  plainly, 
and  which,  as  the  whole  history  of  popular  poetry  teaches, 
it  required  precisely  a  mighty  genius  like  Homer  to  perform. 
And  this  brings  us  to  the  third  presumption,  with  which  we 
must  start  in  judging  of  the  alleged  inconsistencies  of  the 
Iliad.  We  must  bear  in  mind  that  Homer  did  not  make 
his  materials,  but  received  them ;  the  little  wholes  which  he 
had  to  recast  and  organize  into  a  great  whole,  already 
existed  in  the  minds  and  in  the  mouths  of  the  people  whom 
he  addressed,  just  as  the  Romaic  ballads  that  arose  out  of 
the  war  of  independence  in  1821-7  exist  in  the  minds  and 
mouths  of  the  Hellenes  of  the  present  day,  waiting  for  some 
second  Homer,  it  may  be,  to  fuse  them  with  a  great  epos 
of  Missolonghi,  when  the  day  may  at  length  have  come 
for  that  reconstruction  of  that  Byzantine  empire  which  the 
late  Czar  of  Russia  said  he  would  on  no  account  tolerate. 
In  the  same  way  an  epic  poem  of  Caledonian  loyalty, 
were  the  times  favorable,  might  be  made  out  of  the  materials 

18* 


210  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

contained  'in  the  Scottish  Jacobite  songs ;  and  a  grander 
epos  still  called  "The  Fall  of  Napoleon,"  might  be  con- 
structed containing  many  finely  dramatic  materials  from  the 
war  songs  composed  by  Korner  and  others  in  the  great  Ger- 
man rising  of  1813.  Now,  if  the  rich  materials  of  popular 
traditionary  song,  out  of  which  Homer  constructed  the  Iliad 
(and  no  person  who  knows  any  thing  about  such  matters  will 
think  it  more  probable  that  he  made  it  out  of  nothing)  con- 
tained, as  they  could  not  but  contain,  certain  elements  that 
would  be  incongruous,  when  the  diiferent  parts  were  worked 
up  into  a  new  whole;  and  if  Homer  did  not  care  —  as  the 
practice  of  his  art  did  not  require  him  to  be  particularly 
curious  —  whether  every  line  or  phrase  that  marked  the 
original  independence  of  these  parts,  was  nicely  obliterated, 
it  is  manifest  that  the  small  flaws  in  the  concatenation  which 
may  here  and  there  be  ,visible  to  the  curious  eye,  prove,  not 
as  Lachmann  imagines,  that  one  poet  did  not  organize  the 
whole,  but  that  Homer  gave  himself  no  concern  to  disguise 
the  fact,  that  the  several  parts  of  his  poem,  both  in  the  pop- 
ular tradition  and  in  the  actual  practice  of  his  art,  had  a 
complete  and  independent  existence  apart  from  the  magni- 
ficent whole  into  which  his  genius  had  organized  them. 

These  considerations  will  enable  the  student  of  Homer  to 
make  short  work,  not  only  with  the  hypercritical  captiousness 
and  the  peeping  anatomy  of  Lachmann's  Betrachtungen,  but 
also  with  the  more  large  and  philosophical  analysis  of  Mr. 
Grote.  We  must  not  start  in  our  inquiry  into  the  unity 
of  the  Iliad,  with  the  strong  inclination  to  magnify  the  im- 
portance of  small  inconsistencies,  but  with  the  most  charita- 
ble desire  possible  to  overlook  them.  This  poet,  as  com- 
pared with  Virgil,  Dante,  or  Milton,  demands  the  special 
indulgence  of  the  critic ;  and  yet  it  does  rather  seem  that 
from  Wolf  down  to  Grote,  the  whole  army  of  objectors  are 
keenly  set  upon  being  particularly  severe,  in  many  cases  pos- 
itively  ill-natured,  and,   from  a  poetic   point  of  view,   as 


HOMER.  211 

Colonel  Mure  has  triumphantly  shown,  positively  unjust. 
For  not  only  do  they  pay  no  regard  to  those  kindly  consider- 
ations which  we  have  stated,  arising  out  of  the  peculiar 
position  of  the  poet,  and  the  nature  of  his  materials,  but 
with  a  perverse  ingenuity  pardonable  scarcely  in  Germans, 
they  insist  on  judging  poetry  by  rules  applicable  only  to 
works  composed  with  a  strictly  practical,  or  a  purely  scien- 
tific view.  If  an  experienced  soldier  like  Napoleon  could 
criticize  with  such  a  cutting  eloquence  the  description  of  the 
taking  of  Troy  by  the  polished  and  learned  \^rgil  which  yet 
speaks  admirably  to  the  imagination,^  how  strange  and  how 
unreasonable  that  a  gentleman  of  Mr.  Grote's  discernment 
should  urge  as  a  strong  proof  against  the  authenticity  of  the 
seventh  book  of  the  Iliad,  the  circumstance  that  it  repre- 
sents a  ditch  or  dyke,  as  having  been  made  in  the  ninth  year 
of  the  war,  which,  according  to  all  principles  of  military 
tactics,  should  have  been  made,  as  Thucydides  "^  seems  to 
have  taken  the  liberty  of  supposing  it  was  made,  in  the  first 
year !  The  answer  to  all  such  very  scientific  cavils  is  this, 
that  Homer  was  neither  a  soldier  nor  a  critic,  but  a  poet ; 
and  that  when  composing  the  seventh  book  of  the  Iliad,  he 
had  before  his  mind's  eye  not  a  future  Vegetius  or  a  Grote, 
but  only  the  wrath  of  Achilles,  and  the  place  which  that  oc- 
cupied in  the  popular  traditions  of  ^olia.  If  critical  spec- 
tacles were  not  used  when  popular  poems  were  composed, 
their  correct  appreciation  can  allow  no  place  to  scientific 
microscopes.  Many  things  may  be  discovered  by  scientific 
eyes,  —  wonders  in  the  white  rock,  wonders  in  the  blue 
cheese,  —  but  the  character  and  effect  of  popular  poetry 
does  not  come  within  the  laws  of  that  particular  kind  of 
vision.  Even  Mr.  Grote,  who  has  so  ably  exposed  the 
absurdity  of  the  Wolfian  "  small  song  theory "  (Klein-lie- 
der-theorie),  which  resolves  the  Iliad  into  an  aggregate  of 

1  See  Classical  Museum,  Vol.  I.  p.  205.  2  History,  I.  11. 


212  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

separate  ballads,  implying  no  common  authorship  on  the 
ground  of  alleged  inconsistencies,  has,  in  attempting  to 
resolve  the  same  great  work  into  two  separate  works,  the 
AchilTeid  and  the  Iliad,  adopted  a  principle  of  criticism, 
which  every  man  who  has  any  practical  knowledge  of  poets 
and  poetry,  must  feel  to  be  quite  out  of  place.  "  The  last 
two  books  of  the  poem,"  he  says, "  were  probably  additions 
to  the  original  Achilleid  ;  for  the  death  of  Hector  satisfies  the 
exigencies  of  a  coherent  scheme,  and  we  are  not  entitled  to 
extend  the  oldest  poem  beyond  the  limits  which  such  neces- 
sity prescribes.  And  in  the  spirit  of  this  criticism,  he  cuts 
out  the  whole  books,  from  the  second  to  the  seventh  inclu- 
sive, because  the  coherent  scheme  of  an  Achilleid  is  suffi- 
ciently satisfied  without  them,  and  there  is  no  necessity  for 
extending  the  oldest  poem  beyond  the  limits  which  such 
exigency  requires.  But  a  great  poet  is  not  influenced  in  the 
selection  or  the  arrangement  of  his  material  by  any  exi- 
gency of  this  kind ;  that  nude  coherency  of  scheme  which 
satisfies  a  mere  logical  mind,  may  omit  precisely  those  ele- 
ments which  work  most  powerfully  on  his  own  mind  and 
that  of  his  hearers ;  not  imaginative  meagreness  and  par- 
simony, but  luxuriance  and  exuberance  is  his  law.  On  the 
whole,  the  candid  student  of  Lachmann  and  Grote,  if  he  be  a 
person  of  native  poetical  appreciation,  will  have  no  difficulty 
in  coming  to  the  conclusion,  that  the  great  mass  of  the 
recent  skeptical  objections  against  the  organic  unity  of  the 
Iliad,  proceed  on  essentially  perverse  and  oblique  principles, 
and  that  the  brave  old  minstrel  has  assuredly  fallen  on  evil 
days,  when  men  are  eager  to  judge  him  for  whose  judgment 
he  never  wrote,  and  by  canons  which  he  never  acknowl- 
edged. 

The  current  of  these  remarks  by  no  means  implies  that 
there  are  no  interpolations  in  the  received  text  of  Homer. 
They  are  merely  to  tlve  effect,  that  the  sharpest  scrutiny  of 
modern  criticism  and  hyp-jrcriticism  has  failed  to  point  out 


HOMER.  213 

any  such  gross  incongruities  in  the  component  parts  of  the 
poem,  as  wpuld  distinctly  indicate  the  separate  authorship 
of  those  parts.     In  other  words,  the  positive  impression  of 
an  organic  unity  which  the  unlearned  reader  receives  from 
the  perusal  of  these  poems,  can  in  nowise  he  considered  to 
have  been  nullified  by  the  multiform  endeavors  of  learned 
men  to  prove,  that  these  famous  poems  are,  to  any  consider- 
able extent,  an  aggregation  of  independent  and  unharmo- 
nized  integers.     That  those  integers  once  existed  in  that 
crude  state,  may  be  assumed  as  most  certainly  true  ;  but  the 
poems,  as  we  now  have  them,  prove,  in  the  face  of  the  most 
cruel  analysis,  that  these  crude  elements  did,  in  the  earliest 
ages  of  Greek  culture,  come  under  the  fusing  and  formative 
influence  of  a  great  poet-mind  so  completely,  that  any  at- 
tempt to  resolve  them  into  their  primitive  elements  by  the 
method  of  mere  analysis  must  prove  a  failure.     With  this 
understanding, .  every  reasonable   man   must  be   willing   to 
admit  that  there  are,  and  must  in  the  nature  of  the  case  be, 
not  a  few  extraneous  additions  to  a  work,  which  was  a  sort 
of  public  property  in  everybody's  hands  for  several  hundred 
years  before  it  was  finally  fixed  down  to  the  literary  form  in 
which  we  now  have  it.      Some  of  the  interpolations,  of 
course,  may  be  pointed  out,  with  more  or  less  success,  ac- 
cording to  the  general  laws  by  which  incongruities  in  liter- 
ary documents  are   exposed ;    but  in  addition   to  the  pre- 
sumptions  for  leniency   of   treatment   already   stated,  the 
critical  reviser  of  the  Homeric  text  must  bear  in  mind,  that 
there  prevails  in  the  popular  poetry  of  all  countries  a  cer- 
tain current  tone,  and   common   property  in  thought  and 
in  expression,  which  makes  it  extremely  diflacult,  from  mere 
internal  evidence,  to   distinguish  the  original  work  of  the 
great   master-mind  from   the  additions  made  by  a  skilful 
interpolator.     Under  these  extremely  delicate  and  dubious 
conditions,  it  does  appear  extremely  strange,  that  Lachmann 
and  so  many  other  learned  Germans,  should  talk  with  as 


214  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

much  dogmatic  decision  about  the  original  constituent  ele- 
ments of  the  Iliad,  as  if  they  had  been  present  at  their 
creation,  and  personally  superintended  their  manufacture ; 
and  a  plain  man  can  only  conclude  with  regard  to  the  whole 
matter,  that  in  philology,  as  in  metaphysics,  these  minute 
investigators  have,  by  an  intense  special  devotion,  worked 
themselves  into  a  sort  of  chronic  insanity,  from  which  only 
time  and  the  gradual  operation  of  certain  potent  political 
and  social  causes  may  ultimately  achieve  their  redemption. 

Before  we  leave  this  part  of  the  subject  a  few  words  may 
be  allowed  to  the  famous  question.  Whether,  assuming  Ho- 
mei''s  authorship  of  the  Iliad,  there  be  not  reasonable 
grounds  for  assigning  the  Odyssey  to  the  plastic  powers  of 
a  difi^rent  and  less  mighty  minstrel  ?  Now,  if  this  were 
altogether  an  open  question,  and  there  were  no  distinct  and 
intelligible  Hellenic  traditions  as  to  the  common  authorship 
of  these  two  wonderful  poems,  not  a  few  things  might  be 
urged  in  favor  of  a  separate  authorship  which  might  have 
weight  with  a  reasonable  critic.  There  is  a  certain  more 
mild  and  subdued  tone  in  the  Odyssey,  which,  along  with 
certain  points  of  difference  in  incidental  matters,  might  be 
suflficient,  were  there  no  contrary  evidence  to  authorize  the 
supposition  of  a  different  intellectual  origin.  But  the  great 
error  of  those  who,  in  modern  times,  take  upon  themselves 
to  assert  the  separate  authorship  of  these  works,  is  the 
groundless  assumption  that  the  general  voice  and  tradition 
of  Hellenic  antiquity  is  to  be  taken  as  an  element  of  no 
weight  soever,  in  the  critical  estimate  of  such  a  matter. 
On  this  point  we  differ  toto  coelo  from  the  Germans,  and  are 
nothing  ashamed  to  believe,  with  our  learned  countryman, 
Colonel  Mure,  that  Aristotle,  Plato,  and  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  the  highest  intellects  in  Greece,  had  very  suf- 
ficient reasons  for  placing  a  wide  gulf  between  the  two 
epic  poems  which  they  agreed  to  stamp  with  the  name  of 
Homer,  and  the  very  inferior  works  of  a  cognate  character. 


HOMER.  .  215 

known  afterwards  under  the  name  of  the  Epic  Cycle.  Na- 
'ture  did  not  produce  twin  Homers  in  those  old  Greek  days, 
we  may  depend  upon  it,  any  more  than  she  has  produced  in 
these  days  twin  Dantes  or  twin  Shakespeares.^  If  there 
had  been  a  second  Homer  of  genius  large  enough  to  pro- 
duce a  counterpoise  to  such  a  work  as  the  Iliad,  no  doubt 
the  Homeridae  of  some  second  Chios  would  have  been 
equally  eager  to  stereotype  his  memory  in  their  compo- 
sition, and  to  immortalize  themselves  with  his  name.  But 
precisely,  we  imagine,  because  there  was  only  one  Homer, 
was  there  only  one  guild  of  gentile  Homeridae,  and  one 
uniform  undisputed  authorship  of  the  Iliad  and  the  Odys- 
sey among  the  Greeks  till  some  pragmatical  grammarians  in 
meagre  Alexandria  (among  whom  a  certain  Xenon  and 
Hellanicus  are  specialized),  the  prototypes  of  our  modern 
Wolfians,  began  to  nibble  at  imagined  incongruities,  and  to 
moot  the  question  of  separate  authorship.  Such  being  the 
historical  conditions  under  which  the  question  is  raised,  it  is 
manifest  that  the  presumptions,  as  in  the  question  about  the 
unity  of  the  Iliad,  are  all  against  the  disintegrators  ;  and  a 
detailed  examination  of  their  array  of  minute  and  micro- 
scopic objections  to  the  common  authorship  will,  in  all  likeli- 
hood, bi'ing  the  intelligent  student,  as  it  has  brought  Colonel 
Mure,  to  a  distinct  verdict  oi  not  proven.  One  may,  indeed, 
urge  the  same  objection  against  all  the  objections  of  the 
Separatists  —  Xo3Qi'C,ovxig  as  they  were  called  —  that  Mr. 
Grote  has  urged  against  Lachmann  and  the  minute  dissec- 
tors of  the  Iliad.  "  The  Wolfian  theory,"  says  that  emi- 
nent scholar,  "  explains  the  gaps  and  contradictions  through- 
out the  narrative,  but  it  explains  nothing  else.  In  like 
manner,  we  may  say  the  theory  of  the  Separatists  explains 
the  small  incongruities  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey, 

1  "  Some  people  believe  in  twenty  Homers  ;  we  in  one.  Nature  is 
not  80  prodigal  of  her  poets."  (John  Wilson,  in  Blackwood's  Maga- 
»ine,  April,  1831.) 


216  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

but  it  leaves  out  of  account  altogether  a  more  difficult  matter 
to  explain  —  the  very  remarkable  congruity  that  exists  be- 
tween the  whole  style,  tone,  color,  and  materials  of  these 
poems.  This  congruity  has  been  pointed  out  with  great 
skill  and  effect  by  Colonel  Mure,  also  by  a  recent  French 
writer,  Alexis  Pierron,^  whose  words,  after  so  much  heavy 
discussion  with  the  Germans,  the  English  reader  will  doubt- 
less accept  as  a  welcome  relief :  — 

"  Mais  le  style,  les  tours  de  phrase,  I'ordre  et  le  mouve- 
ment  des  pens^es !  mais  le  versification !  mais  les  formules 
consacr^es  !  mais  les  epithetes  traditionelles !  c'est  la  ce  que 
les  chorizontes  negligent  de  comparer  dans  le  deux  poems. 
Je  n'hesite  pas  a  dire,  que  cent  vers  pris  au  hazard  dans  I'un 
ne  ressemblent  pas  moins  a  cent  vers  pris  dans  I'autre,  et  pour 
la  facture,  et  pour  la  tournure,  et  pour  le  mouvement  general, 
que  ceux-ci  ne  ressemblent  a  tous  les  vers  qui  les  precedent 
et  les  suivent.  Si  le  style  est  I'homme  meme,  comme  dit 
Buffon,  le  m§me  style  c'est  le  mgme  homme.  If  n'y  a  qu'un 
Homere.  Le  style  ne  s'enleve  pas  :  et,  malgr^  tous  les 
efforts,  on  ne  prend  pas  le  tour  d'esprit  d'un  autre :  on 
n'ecrit  qu'avec  soi-meme,  mieux  qu'autrui  ou  plus  mal,  aussi 
bien  peut-etre,  mais  toujours  autrement.  Sans  doute  c'est 
une  grande  merveille,  que  le  meme  homme  qui  a  compose 
riliade  soit  aussi  I'auteur  de  I'Odyssee.  Mais  le  phenomene 
de  ressemblance  admis  pas  le  chorizontes  est  bien  plus  inoui 
encore.  Le  vieux  Pythagoricien,  Ennius,  disoit  'que  I'ame 
d'Homere  avoit  passe  dans  la  sienne  ;  et  Ton  sait  quel  Ho- 
mere c'etoit  qu'  Ennius.  C'est  bien  une  autre  metempsy- 
cose  qu'il  nous  faudrait  admettre,  pour  donner  raison  a  ces 
Pythagoriciens  nouveaux.  II  y  a  une  chose  cent  fois  plus 
extraordinaire  que  I'existence  d'un  Homere  unique,  c'est 
I'existence  de  deux  Homeres." 

After  having  cleared  our  way  through  this  dreary  accu- 

1  Litl€rature  Grecqtie,  Paris,  1850. 


HOMER.  217 

mulation  of  critical  briers  and  brambles,  it  only  remains 
that  we  state  shortly  what  is  the  real  character  and  worth  of 
the  Homeric  poems,  as  we  have  them,  and  what  is  their 
proper  and  enduring  place  in  the  poetical  literature  of  the 
world.  And  here  we  must  start  with  a  grateful  recognition 
of  the  point  of  view  on  which  our  judgment  of  the  Homeric 
poems  has  been  placed  by  the  labors  of  Wolf  and  his  fol- 
lowers. Their  error  did  not  lie  in  their  blindness  to  the  true 
character  of  these  productions,  but  in  their  attributing  to  a 
dozen  or  a  score  of  Homers  a  phenomenon  which  finds  a 
more  obvious  and  satisfactory  explanation  in  the  time-hon- 
ored recognition  of  one.  But  the  genuine  character  of  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  as  the  poetry  of  the  people  composed 
to  be  sung,  not  the  poetry  of  the  individual  written  to  be 
read,  though  previously  discovered  by  Bentley,  Vico,  and 
Wood,^  was  never  generally  acknowledged  and  felt  till  it 
was  brought  forward  by  Wolf,  and  scattered  over  Europe 
by  the  host  of  enthusiastic  disciples  whom  his  genius  roused 
into  a  new  and  vivid  consciousness  of  a  great  truth.  AH 
the  errors  of  that  school,  in  fact,  which  we  have  been  obliged 
to  criticize  in  severe  language,  were  but  exaggerations  and 
caricatures  of  the  great  truth  which  Wolf  propounded  in 
his  Prolegomena  of  the  essential  generic  difference  between 
Paradise  Lost,  the  epos  of  the  scholarly  man  Milton,  and 
Homer's  Iliad,  the  epos  of  the  rude  Greek  people.  Homer 
lived  in  an  age  when  the  individual  poet  had  not  commenced 
to  separate  himself  from  the  general  culture  of  his  people, 
after  such  a  strange  fashion  as  ,we  see  in  the  Shelleys,  the 
Byrons,  the  Wordsworths,  and  the  Tennysons  of  modern 
times.  The  poetry  of  Homer,  therefore,  represents  the  age 
of  Homer  more  completely  than  the  most  popular  of  our 
highly  cultivated  modern  poetry  represents  the  age  to  which 
the  poet  belongs.     The  reason  of  this  plainly  is,  that  in  the 

^  An  Essay  On  the   Original  Genius  and  Writings  of  Homer,  by  R. 
Wood,  Esq.,  London,  1770. 

19 


218  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

earliest  ages  of  society,  the  minstrel  was  the  only  and  the 
universal  exponent  of  the  highest  moral  and  intellectual  life 
of  his  age,  and  had  an  existence  only  as  expressing  this 
culture  in  a  popular  and  effective  way.  Whereas,  in  later 
times,  the  man  of  genius  rose  into  an  independent  existence, 
and  often  expressed  merely  his  own  cultures  and  that  of  a 
select  body  —  more  or  less  numerous  —  of  literary  sympa- 
thizers and .  admirers  whom  he  might  have  the  power  to 
attach.  The  intimate  relation  that  existed  between  the 
heroic  doidog  and  his  hearers  may  perhaps  be  best  under- 
stood by  comparing  that  sort  of  action  and  reaction  which 
exists  between  the  writers  of  leading  articles  in  a  newspa- 
per like  the  Times,  and  the  public  to  whom  their  daily  ap- 
peals are  addressed.  A  similar  case  occurs  in  the  weekly 
addresses  of  a  popular  preacher  to  a  religious  people  like  the 
Scotch,  whose  faith  has  not  degenerated  into  decent  formal- 
ism or  unmeaning  ceremonial.  Herein,  therefore,  lies  the 
invaluable  excellence  of  the  Homeric  poems,  which  Wolf 
profoundly  felt,  and  which  made  him  careless  about  the  mere 
personality  of  their  reputed  author,  —  in  the  fact  that, 
whether  these  poems  be  the  composition  of  one,  or  a  half  a 
hundred  minstrels,  they  are  equally  inspired  by  the  breath 
of  a  great  poetic  soul,  and  that  soul  the  highest  life  of  the 
Greek  people,  at  one  of  the  most  poetic  periods  of  its  exist- 
ence. Recognizing  this  fundamental  truth,  the  great  Ger- 
man critic  could  readily  let  loose  from  his  grasp  a  great 
many  much-bespoken  excellencies  of  the  mere  man  Homer, 
apart  from  the  Greek  peopje,  w^ich  were  either  quite  imag- 
inary, or  not  at  all  necessary  to  the  main  fact  of  the  essen- 
tially popular  and  national  character  of  the  poems.  In 
room  of  a  great  mass  of  foolish  indiscriminate  eulogy  heaped 
up  by  various  famous  critics  both  ancient  and  modern,  Wolf 
enunciated  the  peculiar  excellence  of  the  great  king  of  Hel- 
lenic ballad-singers  in  the  following  simple  and  significant 
words :  "  Haec  carraina  paullo  diligentius  cognita  admiran- 


feOMER.  219 

dam  ostendant  vim  naturae  atque  ingenii  minorem  artis,  nul- 
1am  reconditae  doctrinae  et  exquisitae."  ^  The  first  great  excel- 
lence of  Homer's  poetry,  as  here  expressed,  undoubtedly  lies 
in  its  complete  naturalness,  simplicity,  and  healthiness,  with 
an  entire  absence  of  all  those  faults  which  are  the  natural 
product  of  over-stimulated  art  in  a  high  state  of  intellectual 
culture.  In  thought.  Homer  exhibits  nothing  strained,  far- 
fetched, or  affected ;  in  sentiment,  no  morbid  groping,  no  cu- 
rious over-nice  sensibility  in  particular  favorite  directions  ; 
in  moral  tone,  neither  prudery  nor  wantonness  ;  no  uncom- 
fortable strife  between  the  real  and  ideal,  betAveen  poetry 
and  life,  between  rhyme  and  reason.  With  the  bard  of  the 
Iliad,  as  indeed  to  a  great  extent  with  all  the  Greek  poets 
in  the  best  ages,  the  ideal  is  only  the  highest  step  in  the  lad- 
der of  the  real.  In  style  again,  we  find  in  Homer,  as  in  the 
Old  Testament,  nothing  that  smacks  of  the  artist ;  there  is  no 
forced  and  studied  concentration  as  in  Thucydides  and 
Tacitus ;  no  stringing  together  of  brilliant  antitheses  as  in 
Velleius  Paterculus ;  much  less  any  theatrical  turgidity  and 
proposed  pomp  of  words  as  in  Lucan,  and  not  a  few  of  the 
later  classics,  both  Greek  and  Roman,  who  flourished  at  a 
period  when  language  had  lost  its  native  modesty  and  be- 
come vitiated,  as  a  conceited  beauty  does  by  an  assiduous 
contemplation  of  her  own  perfections.  Closely  connected 
with  this  complete  naturalness  of  Homer,  is  his  remarkable 
objectiveness,  as  the  German  critics  call  it,  —  that  is  to  say, 
the  extraordinary  clearness,  breadth,  accuracy,  and  vigor  of 
his  impi'essions  of  the  external  world  :  or  as  an  artist  would 
say,  his  fine  eye  both  for  minute  delicacy  of  detail  and  gran- 
deur of  general  effect  in  his  pictures.  The  reason  of  this 
lies  in  the  fact  that  Homer  lived  in  a  perfectly  natural  state 
of  society,  when  all  men,  and  especially  poets,  were  con- 
stantly called  upon  to  use  their  eyes,  not  upon  gray  parch- 

1  Prolegom.,  12. 


220  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ment  and  spotted  paper,  but  upon  the  fresh  and  ever-chang- 
ing^ variety  of-  those  soul-seizing  pictures  which  nature  and 
life  are  continually  pouring  in  upon  those  whose  eyes  are 
quick  and  open  to  her  fulness.  In  Homer  there  is  found 
not  the  least  trace  of  the  anxiously  subtle  thought,  the  loose- 
floating  sentiment,  the  cloudy  imaginations,  the  dim  specula- 
tions, the  gray  intangible  abstractions  that  never  fail  to  char- 
acterize the  poetry  of  a  later  age,  when  the  particular  men- 
tal character  of  the  poet  assumes  an  undue  prominence,  and 
the  writer  wastes  himself  in  a  painful  struggle  to  find  ade- 
quate expressions  for  certain  infinite  longings  and  indefinite 
desires  that  have  no  counterpart  in  the  external  world,  or  in 
the  bosom  of  any  healthy-minded  reader.  Not  a  less  re- 
markable consequence  of  the  nice  harmony  between  Homer 
and  his  audience  was  the  honest  faith  and  unaffected  re- 
ligiousness that  breathes  through  every  page  of  his  two  great 
works.  Poets,  indeed,  are  naturally  a  religious  race,  and, 
except  under  peculiar,  harsh  influences,  readily  harmonize 
with  the  theological  belief  of  the  country  to  whose  human 
aspirations  it  is  their  high  mission  to  give  utterance.  But  in 
ages  of  high  intellectual  culture,  when  the  individual  often 
runs  aside  into  strange  tracks  of  private  speculation,  the  lead- 
ing minds  of  the  day,  including  poets,  often  find  themselves 
forced  into  a  state  of  strange  and  uncomfortable  protest 
against  the  religious  convictions  of  the  masses  whom  they 
are  destined  to  lead ;  and  in  this  way  strange  phenomena 
become  visible  in  the  literary  heaven,  —  as  in  the  case  of 
Euripides,  Lucretius,  Lucan,  Lucian,  Goethe,  Byron,  Burns, 
Shelley,  and  many  more.  With  difiiculties  of  this  kind, 
which  always  interfere  to  a  great  extent  with  a  poet's  popu- 
lar influence.  Homer  had  nothing  to  do.  The  theology  of 
his  day  was  no  doubt  full  of  puerilities,  and  not  free  from 
contradictions ;  but  philosophy  yet  unborn  had  not  brought 
these  puerilities  and  inconsistencies  into  a  distinctly  felt 
collision  with  the  higher  sentiments  of  a  healthy  piety  in  the 


HOMES.  221 

mind  of  the  great  minstrel.  Homer's  piety  is  accordingly 
thoroughly  serious,  but  withal  playfully  cheerful.  Calvin- 
istic  readers  might  think  him  jesting  sometimes  ;  and  grave 
German  critics  have  been  offended  at  the  tone  of  the  love 
affair  of  Ares  and  Aphrodite  in  Odyssey  viii.,  which  they 
confidently  pronounce  an  interpolation ;  ^  but  they  are  mis- 
taken, —  Lucian  did  not  live  till  one  thousand  years  after- 
wards and  he  wrote  many  clever  comic  sketches  indeed,  but 
not  an  Iliad.  The  epic  poet,  or  great  popular  minstrel  of  a 
heroic  age,  is'  always  a  believer.^ 

The  extraordinary  excellence  of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  as 
pattern  specimens  of  the  popular  epos,  may  be  most  readily 
discerned  by  comparing  them  with  the  Niebelungen-lay 
of  the  Germans,  a  poem  composed  in  a  similar  stage  of 
society,  and  so  much  under  the  same  circumstances  that 
Lachmann  actually  set  himself  to  analyze  it  after  the  Wolfian 
fashion,  and  resolve  it  into  what  he  considered  its  constituent 
"small  songs."  In  this  Teutonic  epos  the  unprejudiced 
reader  will,  along  with  many  qtuet  beauties,  discover  an 
utter  want  of  that  equestrian  vigor,  manfulness,  and  fire, 
which  never  remit  in  the  sinewy  and  bracing  course  of  the 
Iliad.  Homer  sometimes  seems  to  take  his  subject  easily,  — 
either  sleeps  himself,  no  doubt,  or  some  interpolated  Homerid 
is  sleeping  in  his  chair,  —  but  he  is  never  flat,  never  thin, 
never  weak.  Of  the  Niebelungen-lay,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  may  say  that  breadth,  dilution,  and  weakness  are  the  ohar- 
acteristics ;  it  is  a  German  Iliad,  and  a  very  German  Iliad 

1  On  this  point,  and  on  the  subject  of  Homeric  interpolation  gener- 
ally, see  some  admirable  remarks  in  a  paper  by  W.  Watkins  Lloyd. 
Classical  Museum,  Vol.  vi.,  p.  387. 

2  On  the  interesting  subject  of  the  Thedogy  of  Homer,  see  Nagels- 
bach's  Homensche  Theologie,  Niimberg,  1840;  and  Classical  Museum, 
Vol.  vii.,  p.  414.  The  work  of  Granville  Penn,  —  "  An  Examination 
of  the  Primary  Argument  of  the  Iliad,  London,  1821,"  —  contains  some 
ideas  on  this  subject  that  must  be  regarded  as  high-flown  and  hyper- 
bolical, and  remote  from  the  simple  truth. 

19* 


22?  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

indeed,  as  Coleridge  said  of  the  Messiah  of  Klopstock  —  an 
Iliad  composed  by  an  old  German  in  his  easy  chair,  envelop- 
ing his  ungirt  muse  in  a  loose-floating  atmosphere  of  tobacco- 
smoke  ;  —  Homer  in  his  shppers.  But  besides  vigor,  the 
Greek  asserts  his  proud  preeminence  over  the  German  by 
the  healthy  hilarity,  and  the  rich  sunny  luxuriance  of  his 
fine  Ionic  temperament.  One  feels  that  these  poems  were 
written  in  a  clime  where,  next  to  Olympian  Jove,  the  shin- 
ing Apollo  was  the  great  object  of  local  worship.  His 
variety  and  many-sidedness  have  been  equally  praised  ;  for, 
though  it  is  certainly  true  that  there  is,  for  our  modern 
tastes,  a  very  considerable  superfluity  of  mere  fighting  in  the 
Iliad,  we  must  bear  in  mind  that  Homer  wrote  in  an  age 
when  the  soldier  was  the  only  hero,  and  for  a  people  to 
whom  the  recital  of  the  military  exploits  of  their  ancestors 
was  as  full  of  moral  significance,  as  the  trials  of  the  Apostle 
Paul  are  to  a  modern  Christian.  Not  less  admirable,  finally, 
than  his  vigor,  his  sunniness,  and  his  luxuriant  variety,  are 
the  sobriety,  sense,  and  raQjieration  —  the  truly  Greek  (Tcoqp^o- 
avvTi — that  every  where  regulate,  and  keep  within  chaste  lim- 
its, the  billowy  enthusiasm  of  the  old  minstrel.  Occasionally, 
perhaps,  when  a  patriotic  feeling  interferes,  there  may  be 
discerned  a  little  ludicrous  exaggeration  —  as,  for  example, 
in  the  manner  in  which  Hector  is  made  to  comport  himself 
before  the  might  of  Achilles,  in  the  twenty-second  book ; 
but,  generally  speaking,  the  poet's  thorough  naturalness  and 
truth,  keep  him  by  a  safe  instinct  within  the  nicest  limits  of 
good  taste.  In  the  Niebelungen-lay,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
in  Klopstock's  Messiah,  there  is  a  plentiful  exhibition,  in  the 
author's  way,  of  the  most  appalling  exaggeration.  The  ca- 
tastrophe of  the  Odyssey,  no  doubt  is  sufliciently  bloody  ;  but 
this  is  the  divine  retributive  vengeance  of  a  goddess  for  a 
long  series  of  offences  of  a  very  gross  and  wanton  descrip- 
tion ;  and,  besides,  it  may  well  be  called  sober  and  moderate 
when  contrasted  with  that  gigantic  Cyclopean  architectui-e 


HOMER.  223 

of  terrors  cemented  with  streaming  blood,  and  wrapt  in 
flames  of  portentous  conflagration,  which  forms  such  a 
grim  catastrophe  to'the  grim  epos  of  Niebelungen. 

The  works  of  Homer  have  been  translated  into  all  the 
notable  languages  of  the  West ;  seldom,  however,  or  never, 
it  is  to  be  feared,  with  the  pervading  perception  of  his  true 
character  as  a  great  popular  minstrel,  the  general  under- 
standing of  which  great  truth,  as  we  have  stated,  dates  in 
Europe  only  from  the  publication  of  Wolf's  Prolegomena 
about  sixty  years  ago.  The  best  Italian  translations  are  by 
Cesarroti  and  Monti;  French,  by  Dacier,  de  Rochefort, 
Bitaub6  and  Dugas-Montbel ;  German,  by  Stolberg  and 
Voss  ;  English,  by  Chapman,  Hobbes,  Pope,  Cowper, 
Sotheby,  and  Newman. 

For  other  details  with  regard  to  Homeric  literature, 
which  forms  a  library  in  itself,  the  student,  besides  Colonel 
Mure's  great  work,  may  consult  Bernhardy's  Griecfdsche 
Literatur,  Halle,  1845  ;  Lauer's  Homerische  Poesie,  Berlin, 
1851,  and  Dr.  Ihne's  artiele  in  Smith's  Dictionary. 


OLIVER    GOLDSMTTH, 


Oliver  Goldsmith  was  one  of  the  most  pleasing  Eng- 
lish writers  of  the  eighteenth  century.  He  was  of  a  Protes- 
tant and  Saxon  family  which  had  long  been  settled  in  Ire- 
land, and  which  had,  like  most  other  Protestant  and  Saxon 
families,  been,  in  troubled  times,  harassed  and  put  in  fear  by 
the  native  population.  His  father,  Charles  Goldsmith, 
studied  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  at  the  diocesan  school 
of  Elphin,  became  attached  to  the  daughter  of  the  school- 
master, married  her,  took  orders,  and  settled  at  a  place 
called  Pallas,  in  the  county  of  Longford.  There  he  with 
difficulty  supported  his  wife  and  childi-en  on  what  he  could 
earn,  partly  as  a  curate  and  partly  as  a  farmer. 

At  Pallas,  Oliver  Goldsmith  was  born  in  November, 
1728.  That  spot  was  then,  for  all  practical  purposes,  almost 
as  r6mote  from  the  busy  and  splendid  capital  in  which  his 
later  years  were  passed,  as  any  clearing  in  Upper  Canada 
or  any  sheep-walk  in  Australasia  now  is.  Even  at  this  day, 
those  enthusiasts  who  venture  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  the 
birthplace  of  the  poet,  are  forced  to  perform  the  latter  part 
of  their  journey  on  foot.  The  hamlet  lies  far  from  any 
high  road,  on  a  dreary  plain  which,  in  wet  weather,  is  often 
a  lake.  The  lanes  would  break  any  jaunting  car  to  pieces ; 
and  there  are  ruts  and  sloughs  through  which  the  most 
strongly  built  wheels  cannot  be  dragged. 

(224) 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.  225 

While  Oliver  was  still  a  child,  his  father  was  presented 
to  a  living  worth  about  200^.  a  year  in  the  county  of  West- 
meath.  The  family  accordingly  quitted  their  cottage  in  the 
wilderness  for  a  spacious  house  on  a  frequented  road,  near 
the  village  of  Lissoy.  Here  the  boy  was  taught  his  letters 
by  a  maid-servant,  and  was  sent  in  his  seventh  year  to  a 
village  school  kept  by  an  old  quarter-master  on  half  pay, 
who  professed  to  teach  nothing  but  reading,  writing,  and 
arithmetic,  but  who  had  an  inexhaustible  fund  of  stories 
about  ghosts,  banshees,  and  fairies,  about  the  great  Rap- 
paree  chiefs,  Baldearg  O'Donnell  and  galloping  Hogan,  and 
about  the  exploits  of  Peterborough  and  Stanhope,  the  sur- 
prise of  Monjuich,  and  the  glorious  disaster  of  Brihuega. 
This  man  must  have  been  of  the  Protestant  religion ;  but 
he  was  of  the  aboi'iginal  race,  and  not  only  spoke  the  Irish 
language,  but  could  pour  forth  unpremeditated  Irish  verses. 
Oliver  early  became,  and  through  his.  life  continued  to  be,  a 
passionate  admirer  of  the  Irish  music,  and  especially  of  the 
compositions  of  Carolan,  some  of  the  last  notes  of  whose 
harp  he  heard.  It  ought  to  be  added  that  Oliver,  though 
by  birth  one  of  the  Englishry,  and  though  connected  by 
numerous  ties  with  the  Established  Church,  never  showed 
the  least  sign  of  that  contemptuous  antipathy  with  which,  in 
his  days,  the  ruling  minority  in  Ireland  too  generally  re- 
garded tjbe  subject  majority.  So  far  indeed  was  he  from 
sharing  in  the  opinions  and  feelings  of  the  caste  to  which  he 
belonged,  that  he  conceived  an  aversion  to  the  Glorious  and 
Immortal  Memory,  and,  when  George  the  Third  was  on  the 
throne,  maintained  that  nothing  but  the  restoration  of  the 
banished  dynasty  could  save  the  country. 

From  the  humble  ficademy  kept  by  the  old  soldier.  Gold- 
smith was  removed  in  his  ninth  year.  He  went  to  several 
grammar-schools,  and  acquired  some  knowledge  of  the 
ancient  languages.  His  life,  at  this  time,  seems  to  have 
been  far  from  happy.    He  had,  as  appears  from  the  admira- 


226  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

ble  portrait  of  him  at  Knowle,  features  harsh  even  to  ugli- 
ness. The  smallpox  had  set  its  mark  on  him  with  more 
than  usual  severity.  His  stature  was  small,  and  his  limbs 
ill  put  together.  Among  boys  little  tenderness  is  shown  to 
personal  defects ;  and  the  ridicule  excited  by  poor  Oliver's 
appearance,  was  heightened  by  a  peculiar  simplicity  and  a 
disposition  to  blunder  which  he  retained  to  the  last.  He 
became  the  common  butt  of  boys  and  masters,  was  pointed 
at  as  a  fright  in  the  play-ground,  and  flogged  as  a  dunce  in 
the  school-room.  When  he  had  risen  to  eminence,  those 
who  had  once  derided  him,  ransacked  their  memory  for  the 
events  of  his  early  years,  and  recited  repartees  anft  couplets 
which  had  dropped  from  him,  and  which,  though  little  no- 
ticed at  the  time,  were  supposed,  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later,  to  indicate  the  powers  which  produced  the  Vicar  of 
Wakefield  and  the  Deserted  Village. 

In  his  seventeenth  year  Oliver  went  up  to  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  as  a  sizar.  The  sizars  paid  nothing  for  food  and  tui- 
tion, and  very  little  for  lodging ;  but  they  had  to  perform 
some  menial  services  from  which  they  have  long  been  re- 
lieved. They  swept  the  court ;  they  carried  up  the  dinner 
to  the  fellows'  table,  and  changed  the  plates  and  poured  out 
the  ale  of  the  rulers  of  the  society.  Goldsmith  was  quar- 
tered, not  alone,  in  a  garret,  on  the  window  of  which  his 
name,  scrawled  by  himself,  is  still  read  with  interest.  From 
such  garrets  many  men  of  less  parts  than  his  have  made 
their  way  to  the  woolsack  or  to  the  episcopal  bench.  But 
Goldsmith,  while  he  suffered  all  the  humiliations,  threw 
away  all  the  advantages  of  his  situation.  He  neglected  the 
studies  of  the  place,  stood  low  at  the  examinations,  was 
turned  d6wn  to  the  bottom  of  his  class  for  playing  the  buf- 
foon in  the  lecture-room,  was  severely  reprimanded  for 
pumping  on  a  constable,  and  was  caned  by  a  brutal  tutor 
for  giving  a  ball  in  the  attic  story  of  the  college  to  some  gay 
youths  and  damsels  of  the  city. 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.  227 

While  Oliver  was  leading  at  Dublin  a  life  divided  be- 
tween squalid  distress  and  squalid  dissipation,  his  father 
died,  leaving  a  mere  pittance.  The  youth  obtained  his 
bachelor's  degree,  and  left  the  university.  During  some 
time  the  humble  dwelling  to  which  his  widowed  mother  had 
retired  was  his  home.  He  was  now  in  his  twenty-first  year ; 
it  was  necessary  that  he  should  do  something ;  and  his  edu- 
cation seemed  to  have  fitted  him  to  do  nothing  but  to  dress 
himself  in  gaudy  colors,  of  which  he  was  as  fond  as  a  mag- 
pie, to  take  a  hand  at  cards,  to  sing  Irish  airs,  to  play  the 
flute,  to  angle  in  summer,  and  to  tell  ghost  stories  by  the 
fire  in  winter.  He  tried  five  or  six  professions  in  turn  with- 
out success.  He  applied  for  ordination  ;  but,  as  he  applied 
in  scarlet  clothes,  he  was  speedily  turned  out  of  the  episco- 
pal palace.  He  then  became  tutor  in  an  opulent  family, 
but  soon  quitted  his  situation  in  consequence  of  a  dispute 
about  play.  Then  he  determined  to  emigrate  to  Amex'ica. 
His  relations,  with  much  satisfaction,  set  him  out  for  Cork  on 
a  good  horse,  with  thirty  pounds  in  his  pocket.  But  in  six 
weeks  he  came  back  on  a  miserable  hack,  without  a  penny, 
and  informed  his  mother  that  the  ship  in  which  he  had 
taken  his  passage,  having  got  a  fair  wind  while  he  was  at  a 
party  of  pleasure,  had  sailed  without  him.  Then  he  re- 
solved to  study  the  law.  A  generous  kinsman  advanced 
fifty  pounds.  With  this  sum  Goldsmith  went  to  Dublin, 
was  enticed  into  a  gaming-house,  and  lost  every  shilling. 
He  then  thought  of  medicine.  A  small  purse  was  made 
up  ;  and  in  his  twenty-fourth  year  he  was  sent  to  Edin- 
burgh. At  Edinburgh  he  passed  eighteen  mpnths  in  nom- 
inal attendance  on  lectures,  and  picked  up  some  superficial 
information  about  chemistry  and  natural  history.  Thence 
he  went  to  Leyden,  still  pretending  to  study  physic.  He 
left  that  celebrated  university,  the  third  university  at  which 
be  had  resided,  in  his  twenty-seventh  year,  without  a  de- 
gree, with  the  merest  smattering  of  medical  knowledge,  and 


228  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

with  no  property  but  his  clothes  and  his  flute.  His  flute, 
however,  proved  a  useful  friend.  He  rambled  on  foot 
through  Flanders,  France,  and  Switzerland,  playing  tunes 
which  everywhere  set  the  peasantry  dancing,  and  which 
often  procured  for  him  a  supper  and  a  bed.  He  wandered 
as  far  as  Italy.  His  musical  performances,  indeed,  were 
not  to  the  taste  of  the  Italians  ;  but  he  contrived  to  live  on 
the  alms  which  he  obtained  at  the  gates  of  convents.  It 
should,  however,  be  observed,  that  the  stories  which  he  told 
about  this  part  of  his  life  ought  to  be  received  with  great 
caution ;  for  strict  veracity  was  never  one  of  his  virtues  ; 
and  a  man  who  is  ordinarily  inaccurate  in  narration  is  likely 
to  be  more  than  ordinarily  inaccurate  when  he  talks  about 
his  own  travels.  Goldsmith,  indeed,  was  so  regardless  of 
truth  as  to  assert  in  print  that  he  was  present  at  a  most 
interesting  conversation  between  Voltaire  and  Fontenelle, 
and  that  this  conversation  took  place  at  Paris.  Now  it  is 
certain  that  Voltaire  never  was  within  a  hundred  leagues  of 
Paris  during  the  whole  time  which  Goldsmith  passed  on  the 
continent. 

In  1756  the  wanderer  landed  at  Dover,  without  a  shil- 
ling, without  a  friend,  and  without  a  calling.  He  had,  in- 
deed, if  his  own  unsupported  evidence  may  be  trusted,  ob- 
tained from  the  University  of  Padua,  a  doctor's  degree  ;  but 
this  dignity  proved  utterly  useless  to  him.  In  England  his 
flute  was  not  in  request ;  there  were  no  convents ;  and  he 
was  forced  to  have  recourse  to  a  series  of  desperate  expedi- 
ents. He  turned  strolling  player ;  but  his  face  and  figure 
were  ill  suited  to  the  boards  of  the  humblest  theatre.  He 
pounded  drugs  and  ran  about  London  with  phials  for  chari- 
table chemists.  He  joined  a  swarm  of  beggars  which  made 
its  nest  in  Axe  Yard.  He  was  for  a  time  usher  of  a  school, 
and  felt  the  miseries  and  humiliations  of  this  situation  so 
keenly,  that  he  thought  it  a  promotion  to  be  permitted 
to  earn  his   bread  as  a  bookseller's  hack;    but  he   soon 


OLJVKR    GOLDSMITH.  229 

found  the  new  yoke  more  galling  than  the  old  one,  and 
was  glad  to  become  an  usher  again.  He  obtained  a 
medical  appointment  in  the  service  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany ;  but  the  appointment  was  speedily  revoked.  Why  it 
was  revoked  we  are  not  told.  The  subject  was  one  on 
which  he  never  liked  to  talk.  It  is  probable  that  he  was 
incompetent  to  perform  the  duties  of  the  place.  Then  he 
presented  himself  at  Surgeons'  Hall  for  examination,  as 
mate  to  a  naval  hospital.  Even  to  so  humble  a  post  he  was 
found  unequal.  By  this  time  the  schoolmaster  whom  he  had 
served  for  a  morsel  of  food  and  the  third  part  of  a  bed,  was 
uo  more.  Nothing  remained  but  to  return  to  the  lowest 
drudgeiy  of  literature.  Goldsmith  took  a  garret  in  a  mis- 
erable court,  to  which  he  had  to  climb  from  the  brink  of 
Fleet  Ditch  by  a  dizzy  ladder  of  flagstones  called  Break- 
neck Steps.  The  court  and  the  ascent  have  long  disap- 
peai'ed  ;  but  old  Londoners  well  remember  both.  Here, 
at  thirty,  the  unlucky  adventurer  sat  down  to  toil  like  a 
galley-slave. 

In  the  succeeding  six  years  he  sent  to  the  press  some 
things  which  have  survived,  and  many  which  have  perished. 
He  produced  articles  for  reviews,  magazines,  and  newspa- 
pers ;  children's  books  which,  bound  in  gilt  paper  and 
adorned  with  hideous  wood-cuts,  appeared  in  the  window 
of  the  once  far-famed  shop  at  the  comer  of  St.  Paul's 
Churchyard ;  An  Inquiry  into  the  State  of  Polite  Learning 
in  Europe,  which,  though  of  little  or  no  value>  is  still  re- 
printed among  his  works  ;  a  Life  of  Beau  Nash,  which  is 
not  reprinted,  though  it  well  deserves  to  be  so  ;  a  superfi- 
cial and  incorrect,  but  veiy  readable  History  of  England,  in 
a  series  of  letters  purporting  to  be  addressed  by  a  nobleman 
to  his  son  j  and  some  very  lively  and  amusing  Sketches  of 
London  Society,  in  a  series  of  letters  purporting  to  be  ad- 
dressed by  a  Chinese  traveller  to  his  friends.  All  these 
works  were  anonymous  ;  but  some  of  them  were  well  known 
20 


230  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

to  be  Goldsmith's  ;  and  he  gradually  rose  in  the  estimation 
of  the  booksellers  for  whom  he  drudged.  He  was  indeed 
emphatically  a  popular  writer.  For  accurate  research  or 
grave  disquisition  he  was  not  well  qualified  by  nature  or  by 
education.  He  knew  nothing  accurately  :  his  reading  had 
been  desultory ;  nor  had  he  meditated  deeply  on  what  he  had 
.read.  He  had  seen  much  of  the  world  ;  but  he  had  noticed 
and  retained  little  more  of  what  he  had  seen,  than  some  gro- 
tesque incidents  and  characters  which  had  happened  to  strike 
his  fancy.  But  though  his  mind  was  very  scantily  stored  with 
materials,  he  used  what  materials  he  had  in  such  a  way  as  to 
produce  a  wonderful  effect.  There  have  been  many  greater 
writers  ;  but  perhaps  no  writer  was  ever  more  uniformly 
agreeable.  His  style  was  always  pure  and  easy,  and,  on 
proper  occasions,  pointed  and  energetic.  His  narratives 
were  always  amusing,  his  descriptions  always  picturesque, 
his  humor  rich  and  joyous,  yet  not  without  an  occasional 
tinge  of  amiable  sadness.  About  every  thing  that  he  wrote, 
serious  or  sportive,  there  was  a  certain  natural  grace  and 
decorum,  hardly  to  be  expected  from  a  man  a  great  part 
of  whose  life  had  been  passed  among  thieves  and  beg- 
gars, street-walkers  and  merry-andrews,  in  those  squalid 
dens  which  are  the  reproach  of  great  capitals. 

As  his  name  gradually  became  known,  the  circle  of  his 
acquaintance  widened.  He  was  introduced  to  Johnson,  who 
was  then  considered  as  the  first  of  living  English  writers ; 
to  Reynolds,  the  first  of  English  painters  ;  and  to  Burke, 
who  had  not  yet  entered  parliament,  but  had  distinguished 
himself  greatly  by  his  writings  and  by  the  eloquence  of  his 
conversation.  With  these  eminent  men  Goldsmith  became 
intimate.  In  1763,  he  was  one  of  the  nine  original  mem- 
bers of  that  celebrated  fraternity  which  has  sometimes  been 
called  the  Literary  Club,  but  which  has  always  disclaimed 
that  epithet,  and  still  glories  in  the  simple  name  of  The 
Club. 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.  231 

By  this  time  Goldsmith  had  quitted  his  miserable  dwell- 
ing at  the  top  of  Breakneck  Steps,  and  had  taken  chambers 
in  the  more  civilized  region  of  the  Inns  of  Court.  But  he 
was  still  often  reduced  to  pitiable  shifts.  Towards  the  close 
of  1764  his  rent  was  so  long  in  arrear,  that  his  landlady 
one  morning  called  in  the  help  of  a  sheriff's  officer.  The 
debtor,  in  great  perplexity,  despatched  a  message  to  John- 
son ;  and  Johnson  always  friendly,  though  often  surly,  sent 
back  the  messenger  with  a  guinea,  and  promised  to  follow 
speedily.  He  came  and  found  that  Goldsmith  had  changed 
the  guinea,  and  was  railing  at  the  landlady  over  a  bottle  of 
Madeira.  Johnson  put  the  cork  into  the  bottle,  and  en- 
treated his  friend  to  consider  calmly  how  money  was  to  be 
procured.  Goldsmith  said  that  he  had  a  novel  ready  for 
the  press.  Johnson  glanced  at  the  manuscript,  saw  that 
there  were  good  things  in  it,  took  it  to  a  bookseller,  sold  it 
for  60/.  and  soon  returned  with  the  money.  The  rent  was 
paid  and  the  sheriff's  officer  withdrawn.  According  to  one 
story.  Goldsmith  gave  his  landlady  a  sharp  reprimand  for 
her  treatment  of  him ;  according  to  another  he  insisted  on 
her  joining  him  in  a  bowl  of  punch.  Both  stories  are 
probably  true.  The  novel  which  was  thus  ushered  into  the 
world  was  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield. 

But  before  the.  Vicar  of  Wakefield  appeared  in  print, 
came  the  great  crisis  of  Goldsmith's  literary  life.  In 
Christmas  week,  1764,  he  published  a  poem  entitled  The 
Traveller.  It  was  the  first  work  to  which  he  had  put  his 
name ;  and  it  at  once  raised  him  to  the  rank  of  a  legitimate 
English  classic.  The  opinion  of  the  most  skilful  critics  was, 
that  nothing  finer  had  appeared  in  verse  since  the  fourth 
book  of  the  Dunciad:  In  one  respect  the  Traveller  differs 
from  all  Goldsmith's  other  writings.  In  general  his  de- 
signs were  bad,  and  his  execution  good.  In  the  Traveller^ 
the  execution,  though  deserving  of  much  praise,  is  far  infe- 
rior  to   the   design.     No   philosophical    poem,   ancient   or 


232  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

modern,  has  a  plan  so  noble,  and  at  the  same  time  so  simple. 
An  English  wanderer,  seated  on  a  crag  among  the  Alps, 
near  the  point  where  three  great  countries  meet,  looks  down 
on  the  boundless  prospect,  reviews  his  long  pilgrimage,  re- 
calls the  varieties  of  scenery,  of  climate,  of  government,  of 
religion,  of  national  character,  which  he  has  observed,  and 
comes  to  the  conclusion,  just  or  unjust,  that  our  happiness 
depends  little  on  political  institutions,  and  much  on  the 
temper  and  regulation  of  our  own  minds. 

While  the  fourth  edition  of  the  Traveller  was  on  the 
counters  of  the  booksellers,  the  Ticar  of  Wakefield  appeared, 
and  rapidly  obtained  a  popularity  which  has  lasted  down  to 
our  own  time,  and  which  is  likely  to  last  as  long  as  our 
language.  The  fable  is  indeed  one  of  the  worst  that  ever 
was  constructed.  It  wants,  not  merely  that  probability 
which  ought  to  be  found  in  a  tale  of  common  English  life, 
but  that  consistency  which  ought  to  be  found  even  in  the 
wildest  fiction  about  witches,  giants,  and  fairies.  But  the 
earlier  chapters  have  all  the  sweetness  of  pastoral  poetry, 
together  with  all  the  vivacity  of  comedy.  Moses  and  his 
spectacles,  the  vicar  and  his  monogamy,  the  sharper  and 
his  cosmogony,  the  squire  proving  from  Aristotle  that  rela- 
tives are  related,  Olivia  preparing  herself  for  the  arduous 
task  of  converting  a  rakish  lover  by  studying  the  contro- 
versy between.  Robinson  Crusoe  and  Friday,  the  great 
ladies  with  their  scandal  about  Sir  Tomkyn's  amours  and 
Dr.  Burdock's  verses,  and  Mr.  Burchell  with  his  "  Fudge," 
have  caused  as  much  harmless  mirth  as  has  ever  been 
caused  by  matter  packed  into  so  small  a  number  of  pages. 
The  latter  part  of  the  tale  is  unworthy  of  the  beginning. 
As  we  approach  the  catastrophe  the  absurdities  lie  thicker 
and  thicker,  and  the  gleams  of  pleasantry  become  rarer 
and  rarer. 

The  success  which  had  attended  Goldsmith  as  a  novelist 
emboldened   him   to  try  his  fortune  as   a  dramatist     He 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.      ^  233 

wrote  the  Good-natured  Man,  a  piece  which  had  a  worse 
fate  than  it  deserved.  Garrick  refused  to  produce  it  at 
Drury  Lane.  It  was  acted  at  Covent  Garden  in  1768,  but 
was  coldly  received.  The  author,  however,  cleared  by  his 
benefit  nights,  and  by  the  sale  of  the  copyright,  no  less  than 
500/.,  five  times  as  much  as  he  had  made  by  the  Traveller 
and  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  together.  The  plot  of  the 
Good-Matured  Man  is,  like  almost  all  Goldsmith^s  plots, 
very  ill  constructed.  But  some  passages  are  exquisitely 
ludicrous ;  much  more  ludicrous  indeed,  than  suited  the  taste 
of  the  town  at  that  time.  A  canting,  mawkish  play,  entitled 
False  Delicacy,  had  just  had  an  immense  run.  Sentimen- 
tality was  all  the  mode.  During  some  years,  more  tears 
were  shed  at  comedies  than  at  tragedies ;  and  a  pleasantry 
which  moved  the  audience  to  any  thing  more  than  a  grave 
smile  was  reprobated  as  low.  It  is  not  strange,  therefore, 
that  the  very  best  scene  in  the  Good-natured  Man,  that 
in  which  Miss  Richland  finds  her  lover  attended  by  the 
bailiff  and  the  bailiff's  follower  in  full  court  dresses,  should 
have  been  mercilessly  hissed,  and  should  have  been  omitted 
after  the  first  night. 

In  1770  appeared  the  Deserted  Village.  In  mere  diction 
and  versification  this  celebrated  poem  is  fully  equal,  perhaps 
superior,  to  the  Traveller ;  and  it  is  generally  preferred  to 
the  Traveller  by  that  large  class  of  readers  who  think,  with 
Bayes  in  the  Rehearsal,  that  the  only  use  of  a  plan  is  to 
*bring  in  fine  things.  More  discerning  judges,  however, 
while  they 'admire  the  beauty  of  the  details,  are  shocked  by 
one  unpardonable  fault  which  pervades  the  whole.  The 
fault  which  we  mean  is  not  that  theory  about  wealth  and 
luxury  which  has  so  often  been  censured  by  political  econ- 
omists. The  theory  is  indeed  false:  but  the  poem,  con- 
sidered merely  as  a  poem,  is  not  necessarily  the  worse  on 
that  account  The  finest  poem  in  the  Latin  language,  in- 
deed, the  finest  didactic  poem  in  any  language,  was  written 
20* 


234  <•      NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

in  defence  of  the  silliest  and  meanest  of  all  systems  of  nat- 
ural and  moral  philosophy.  A  poet  may  easily  be  par- 
doned for  reasoning  ill ;  but  he  cannot  be  pardoned  for  de- 
scribing ill,  for  observing  the  world  in  which  he  lives  so 
carelessly  that  his  portraits  bear  no  resemblance  to  the  orig- 
inals, for  exhibiting  as  copies  from  real  life  monstrous  com- 
binations of  things  which  never  were  and  never  could  be 
found  together.  What  would  be  thought  of  a  painter  who 
should  mix  August  and  January  in  one  landscape,  who 
should  introduce  a  frozen  river  into  a  harvest  scene  ? 
Would  it  be  a  sufficient  defence  of  such  a  picture  to  say 
that  every  part  was  exquisitely  colored,  that  the  green 
hedges,  the  apple-trees  loaded  with  fruit,  the  wagons  reel- 
ing under  the  yellow  sheaves,  and  the  sunburned  reapers 
wiping  their  foreheads  were  very  fine,  and  that  the  ice,  and 
the  boys  sliding  were  also  very  fine  ?  To  such  a  picture  the 
Deserted  Village  bears  a  great  resemblance.  It  is  made  up 
of  incongruous  parts.  The  village  in  its  happy  days  is  a 
true  English  village.  The  village  in  its  decay  is  an  Irish 
village.  The  felicity  and  the  misery  which  Goldsmith  has 
brought  close  together  belong  to  two  different  countries, 
and  to  two  different  stages  in  the  progress  of  society.  He 
had  assuredly  never  seen  in  his  native  island  such  a  rural 
paradise,  such  a  seat  of  plenty,  content,  and  tranquillity,  as 
his  Auburn.  He  had  assuredly  never  seen  in  England  all 
the  inhabitants  of  such  a  paradise  turned  out  of  their  homes 
in  one  day  and  forced  to  emigrate  in  a  body  to  America. 
The  hamlet  he  had  probably  seen  in  Kent;  the  ejectment 
he  had  probably  seen"  in  Munster ;  but  by  joining  the  two 
he  has  produced  something  which  never  was  and  never  will 
be  seen  in  any  part  of  the  world. 

In  1773,  Goldsmith  tried  his  chance  at  Covent  Garden 
with  a  second  play,  She  Stoops  to  Conquer.  The  manager 
was  not  without  great  difficulty  induced  to  bring  this  piece 
out.     The  sentimental  comedy  still  reigned,  and  Goldsmith's 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.  235 

comedies  were  not  sentimental.  The  Good-natured  Man 
had  been  too  funny  to  succeed ;  yet  the  mirth  of  the  Good- 
natured  Man  was  sober  when  compaxed  with  tlie  rich  di'oU- 
ery  of  She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  which  is,  in  truth,  an  incom- 
parable farce  in  five  acts.  On  this  occasion,  however,  genius 
triumphed.  Pit,  boxes,  and  galleines  were  in  a  constant 
roar  of  laughter.  If  any  bigoted  admirer  of  Kelley  and 
Cumberland  ventured  to  hiss  or  groan,  he  was  speedily 
silenced  by  a  general  cry  of  "  turn  him  out "  or  "  throw  hun 
over."  Two  generations  have  since  confirmed  the  verdict 
which  was  pronounced  on  that  night. 

While  Goldsmith  was  writing  the  Deserted  Village  and 
She  Stoops  to  Conquer,  he  was  employed  on  works  of  a  very 
different  kind,  works  from  which  he  derived  little  reputation 
but  much  profit.  He  compiled  for  the  use  of  schools  a  Ifis- 
tory  of  Rome,  by  which  he  made  300Z.,  a  History  of  Eng- 
land by  which  he  made  GOO/.,  a  History  of  Greece  for  which 
he  received  250/.,  a  Natural.  History  for  which  the  book- 
sellers covenanted  to  pay  him  eight  hundred  guineas.  These 
works  he  produced  without  any  elaborate  research,  by  merely 
selecting,  abridging,  and  translating  into  his  own  cleai',  pure, 
and  flowing  language,  what  he  found  in  books  well  known 
to  the  world,  but  too  bulky  or  too  dry  for  boys  and  girls. 
He  committed  some  strange  blunders  ;  for  he  knew  nothing 
with  accuracy.  Thus  in  his  History  of  England  he  tells  us 
that  Naseby  is  in  Yorkshire  ;  nor  did  he  correct  this  mistake 
when  the  book  was  reprinted.  He  was  very  nearly  hoaxed 
into  putting  into  the  History  of  Greece  an  account  of  a 
battle  between  Alexander  the  Great  and  Montezuma.  In 
his  Animated  Nature  he  relates,  with  faith  and  with  perfect 
gravity,  all  the  most  absurd  lies  which  he  could  find  in  books 
of  travels  about  gigantic  Patagonians,  monkeys  that  preach 
sermons,  nightingales  that  repeat  long  conversations.  ''  If  he 
can  tell  a  horse  from  a  cow,"  said  Johnson,  "  that  is  the 
extent  of  his  knowledge  of  zoology."     How  little  Goldsmith 


236  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

was  qualified  to  write  about  the  physical  sciences  is  suffi- 
ciently proved  by  two  anecdotes.  He  on  one  occasion 
denied  that  the  sun  is  longer  in  the  northern  than  in  the 
southern  signs.  It  was  vain  to  cite  the  authority  of  Mau- 
pertuis.  "  Maupertuis !  "  he  cried,  "  I  understand  those 
matters  better  than  Maupertuis."  On  another  occasion  he, 
in  defiance  of  the  evidence  of  his  own  senses,  maintained 
obstinately,  and  even  angrily,  that  he  chewed  his  dinner  by 
moving  his  upper  jaw. 

Yet  ignorant  as  Goldsmith  was,  few  writers  have  done 
more  to  make  the  first  steps  in  the  laborious  road  to  knowl- 
edge easy  and  pleasant.  His  compilations  are  widely  dis- 
tinguished from  the  compilations  of  ordinary  bookmakers. 
He  was  a  great,  perhaps  an  unequalled  master  of  the  arts 
of  selection  and  condensation.  In  these  respects  his  his- 
tories of  Rome  and  of  England,  and  still  more  his  own 
abridgments  of  these  histories,  well  deserved  to  be  studied. 
In  general  nothing  is  less  attractive  than  an  epitome ;  but 
the  epitomes  of  Goldsmith,  even  when  most  concise,  are 
always  amusing ;  and  to  read  them  is  considered  by  intelli- 
gent children,  not  as  a  task  but  as  a  pleasure. 

Goldsmith  might  now  be  considered  as  a  prosperous  man. 
He  had  the  means  of  living  in  comfort,  and  even  in  what  to 
one  who  had  so  often  slept  in  barns  and  on  bulks  must  have 
been  luxury.  His  fame  was  great  and  was  constantly  rising. 
He  lived  in  what  was  intellectually  far  the  best  society  of 
the  kingdom,  in  a  society  in  which  no  talent  or  accomplish- 
ment was  wanting,  and  in  which  the  art  of  conversation  was 
cultivated  with  splendid  success.  There  probably  were 
never  four  talkers  more  admirable  in  four  different  ways 
than  Johnson,  Burke,  Beauclerk,  and  Garrick ;  and  Gold- 
smith wSs  on  terpis  of  intimacy  with  all  four.  He  aspired 
to  share  in  their  colloquial  renown ;  but  never  was  ambition 
more  unfortunate.  It  may  seem  strange  that  a  man  who 
wrote  with  so  much  perspicuity,  vivacity,  and  grace,  should 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.  237 

have  been,  whenever  he  took  part  in  conversation,  an 
empty,  noisy,  blundering  rattle.  But  on  this  point  the  evi- 
dence is  overwhelming.  So  extraordinary  Was  the  contrast 
between  Goldsmith's  published  works  and  the  silly  things 
which  he  said,  that  Horace  Walpole  described  hira  as  an  in- 
spired idiot.  "  Noll,"  said  Gairick,  "  wrote  like  an  angel,  and 
talked  like  poor  Pol."  Charaier  declared  that  it  was  a  hard 
exercise  of  faith  to  believe  that  so  foolish  a  chatterer  could 
have  really  written  the  Traveller.  Even  Boswell  could  say, 
with  contemptuous  compassion,  that  he  liked  very  well  to 
hear  honest  Goldsmith  run  on.  "  Yes,  sir,"  said  Johnson, 
"but  he  should  not  like  to  hear  himself."  Minds  differ  as 
rivers  differ.  There  are  transparent  and  sparkling  rivers 
from  which  it  is  delightful  to  drink  as  they  flow ;  to  such 
rivers  the  minds  of  such  men  as  Burke  and  Johnson  may  be 
compared.  But  there  are  rivers  of  which  the  water  when 
first  drawn  is  turbid  and  noisome,  but  becomes  pellucid  as 
crystal,  and  delicious  to  the  taste  if  it  be  suffered  to  stand 
till  it  has  deposited  a  sediment ;  and  such  a  river  is  a  type 
of  the  mind  of  Goldsmith.  His  first  thoughts  on  every 
subject  were  confused  even  to  absurdity,  but  they  required 
only  a  little  time  to  work  themselves  clear.  When  he  wrote 
they  had  that  time ;  and  therefore  his  readers  pronounced 
him  a  man«»f  genius;  but  when  he  talked,  he  talked  non- 
sense, and  made  himself  the  laughing-stock  of  his  hearers. 
He  was  painfully  sensible  of  his  inferiority  in  conversation  ; 
he  felt  every  failure  keenly ;  yet  he  j^d  not  sufficient  judg- 
ment and  self-command  to  hold  his  tongue.  His  animal 
spirits  and  vanity  were  always  impelling  him  to  do  the  one 
thing  which  he  could  not  do.  After  every  attempt  he  felt 
that  he  had  exposed  himself,  and  writhed  with  shame  and 
vexation  ;  yet  the  next  moment  he  began  again. 

His  associates  seem  to  have  regarded  him  with  kindness, 
which  in  spite  of  their  admiration  of  his  writings,  was  not 
unmixed  with  contempt.     In  truth,  there  was  in  his  charac- 


238  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ter  much  to  love,  but  very  little  to  respect.  His  heart  was 
soft  even  to  weakness  ;  he  was  so  generous  that  he  quite 
forgot  to  be  just ;  he  forgave  injuries  so  readily  that  he 
might  be  said  to  invite  them,  and  was  so  liberal  to  beggars, 
that  he  had  nothing  left  for  his  tailor  and  his  butcher.  He 
was  vain,  sensual,  frivolous,  profuse,  improvident.  One  vice 
of  a  darker  shade  was  imputed  to  him,  envy.  But  there  is 
not  the  least  reason  to  believe  that  this  bad  passion,  though 
it  sometimes  made  him  wince  and  utter  fretful  exclamations, 
ever  impelled  him  to  injure  by  wicked  arts  the  reputation 
of  any  of  his  rivals.  The  truth  probably  is,  that  he  was  not 
more  envious,  but  merely  less  prudent  than  his  neighbors. 
His  heart  was  on  his  lips.  All  those  small  jealousies,  which 
are  but  too  common  among  men  of  letters,  but  which  a  man 
of  letters  who.  is  also  a  man  of  the  world,  does  his  best  to 
conceal.  Goldsmith  avowed  with  the  simplicity  of  a  child. 
When  he  was  envious,  instead  of  affecting  indifference,  in- 
stead of  damning  with  faint  praise,  instead  of  doing  injuries 
slyly  and  in  the  dark,  he  told  everybody  that  he  was  envi- 
ous. "  Do  not,  pray,  do  not  talk  of  Johnson  in  such  terms," 
he  said  to  Boswell ;  "  you  harrow  up  my  very  soul." 
George  Steevens  and  Cumberland  were  men  far  too  cun- 
ning to  say  such  a  thing.  They  would  have  echoed  the 
praises  of  the  man  whom  they  envied,  and  ih%n  have  sent 
to  the  newspapers  anonymous  libels  upon  him.  But  what 
was  good  and  what  Avas  bad  in  Goldsmith's  character  was  to 
his  associates  a  perfe(%seciirity  that  he  would  never  commit 
such  villany.  He  was  neither  ill-natured  enough,  nor  long- 
headed enough,  to  be  guilty  of  any  malicious  act  which  re- 
quired contrivance  and  disguise. 

Goldsmith  has  sometimes  been  represented  as  a  man  of 
genius,  cruelly  treated  by  the  world,  and  doomed  to  struggle 
with  difficulties,  which  at  last  broke  his  heart.  But  no  rep- 
resentation can  be  more  remote  from  the  truth.  He  did, 
indeed,  go  through   much  shari)  misery  before  he  had  done 


OLIVER   GOLDSMITH.  239 

any  thing  considerable  in  literature.  But  after  his  name  had 
appeared  on  the  title-page  of  the  Traveller,  he  had  none  but 
himself  to  blame  for  his  distresses.  His  average  income, 
during  the  last  seven  years  of  his  life,  certainly  exceeded 
400^.  a  yeai*,  and  400^.  a  year  ranked,  among  the  incomes 
of  that  day,  as  high  as  800Z.  a  year  would  rank  at  present. 
A  single  man  living  in  the  Temple,  with  400/.  a  year,  might 
then  be  called  opulent.  Not  one  in  ten  of  the  young  gen- 
tlemen of  good  families  who  were  studying  the  law  there 
had  so  much.  But  all  the  wealth  which  Lord  Clive  had 
brought  from  Bengal,  and  Sir  Lawrence  Dundas  from 
Germany,  joined  together,  would  not  have  sufficed  for 
Goldsmith.  He  spent  twice  as  much  as  he  had.  He 
wore  fine  clothes,  gave  dinners  of  several  courses,  paid 
court  to  venal  beauties.  He  had  also,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, to  the  honor  of  his  heart,  though  not  of  his  head,  a 
guinea,  or  five,  or  ten,  according  to  the  state,  of  his  purse, 
ready  for  any  tale  of  distress,  true  or  false.  But  it  was  not 
in  dress  or  feasting,  in  promiscuous  amours  or  promiscuous 
charities,  that  his  chief  expense  lay.  He  had  been  from 
boyhood  a  gambler,  and  at  once  the  most  sanguine  and  the 
most  unskilful  of  gamblers.  For  a  time  he  put  oflF  the  day 
of  inevitable  ruin  by  temporary  expedients.  He  obtained 
advances  fvfgca.  booksellers  by  promising  to  execute  works 
which  he  never  began.  But  at  length  this  source  of  supply 
failed.  He  owed  more  than  2000/.;  and  he  saw  no  hope  of 
extrication  from  his  embarrassments.  His  spirits  and  health 
gave  way.  He  v/as  attacked  by  a  nervous  fever,  which  he 
thought  himself  competent  to  treat.  It  would, have  been 
happy  for  him  if  his  medical  skill  had  been  appreciated  as 
justly  by  himself  as  by  others.  Notwithstanding  the  degree 
which  he  pretended  to  have  received  at  Padua,  he  could 
procure  no  patients.  "  I  do  not  practise,"  he  once  said  ;  "  I 
make  it  a  rule  to  prescribe  only  for  my  friends."  "  Pray, 
dear  Doctor,"  said  Beauclerk,  "  alter  your  rule ;  and  pre- 


240  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

scribe  only  for  your  enemies."  Goldsmith  now,  in  spite 
of  this  excellent  advice,  prescribed  for  himself.  The 
remedy  aggravated  the  malady.  The  sick  man  was  in- 
duced to  call  in  real  physicians ;  and  they  at  one  time 
imagined  that  they  had  cured  the  disease.  Still  his  weak- 
ness and  ifcstlessness  continued.  He  could  get  no  sleep. 
He  could  take  no  food.  "  You  are  worse,"  said  one  of  his 
medical  attendants,  "  than  you  should  be  from  the  degree  of 
fever  which  you  have.  Is  your  mind  at  ease  ?  "  "  No,  it  is 
not,"  were  the  last  recorded  words  of  Oliver  Goldsmith. 
He  died  on  the  third  of  April,  1774,  in  his  forty-sixth  year. 
He  was  laid  in  the  churchyard  of  the  Temple ;  but  the  spot 
was  not  marked  by  any  inscription,  and  is  now  forgotten. 
The  coffin  was  followed  by  Burke  and  sReynolds.  Both 
these  great  men  were  sincere  mourners.  Burke,  when 
he  heard  of  Goldsmith's  death,  burst  into  a  flood  of  tears. 
Reynolds  had.  been  so  much  moved  by  the  news,  that  he  flung 
aside  his  brush  and  palette  for  the  day. 

A  short  time  after  Goldsmith's  death,  a  little  poem  ap- 
peared, which  will,  as  long  as  our  language  lasts,  associate 
the  names  of  his  two  illustrious  friends  with  his  own.  It 
has  already  been  mentioned  that  he  sometimes  felt  keenly 
the  sarcasm  which  his  wild  blundering  talk  brought  upon 
him.  He  was,  not  long  before  his  illness,  j^ipvoked  into 
retaliating.  He  wisely  betook  himself  to  his  pen ;  and  at 
that  weapon  he  proved  himself  a  match  for  all  his  assailants 
together.  Within  a  small  compass  he  drew  with  a  singularly 
easy  and  vigorous  pencil,  the  characters  of  nine  or  ten  of 
his  intimate  associates.  Though  this  little  work  did  not  re- 
ceive his  last  touches,  it  must  always  be  regarded  as  a  mas- 
terpiece. It  is  impossible,  however,  not  to  wish  that  four 
or  five  likenesses  which  have  no  interest  for  posterity  were 
wanting  to  that  noble  gallery,  and  that  their  places  were 
supplied  by  sketches  of  Johnson  and  Gibbon,  as  happy  and 
vivid  as  the  sketches  of  Burke  and  Garriek 


OLIVER    GOLDSMITH.  241 

Some  of  Goldsmith's  friends  and  admirers  honored  him 
with  a  cenotaph  in  Westminster  Abbey.  Nollekins  was 
the  sculptor ;  and  Johnson  wrote  the  inscription.  It  is 
much  to  be  lamented  that  Johnson  did  not  leave  to  pos- 
terity a  more  durable  and  a  more  valuable  memorial  of 
his  friend.  A  life  of  Goldsmith  would  have  been  an  inesti- 
mable addition  to  the  Lives  of  the  Poets.  No  man  appreci- 
ated Goldsmith's  writings  more  justly  than  Johnson  ;  no  man 
was  better  acquainted  with  Goldsmith's  character  and  habits  ; 
and  no  man  was  more  competent  to  delineate  with  truth  and 
spirit  the  peculiarities  of  a  mind  in  which  great  powers  were 
found  in  company  with  great  weaknesses.  But  the  list  of  poets 
to.  whose  works  Johnson  was  requested  by  the  booksellers  to 
furnish  prefaces,  ended  with  Lyttelton,  who  died  in  1773. 
The  line  seems  to  have  been  drawn  expressly  for  the  pur- 
pose of  excluding  the  person  whose  portrait  would  have 
most  fitly  closed  the  series.  Goldsmith,  hpjwever,  has  been 
fortunate  in  his  biographers.  Within  a  few  years  his  life 
has  been  written  by  Mr.  Prior,  by  Mr.  Washington  Irving, 
and  by  Mr.  Forster.  The  diligence  of  Mr.  Prior  deserves 
great  praise ;  the  style  of  Mr.  Washington  Irving  is  always 
pleasing ;  but  the  highest  place  must,  in  justice,  be  assigned 
to  the  eminently  interesting  work  of  Mi".  Forster. 

21 


EDWARD    GIBBON. 


Edward  Gibbon,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  historians 
of  any  age  or  country,  was  also  his  own  historian.  He  has 
left  us  one  of  the  most  piquant  autobiographies  ever  written. 
In  the  following  sketch  the  chief  incidents  of  his  life  will  be 
condensed  from  that  authentic  source ;  for  more  than  facts, 
even  for  the  setting  of  these,  it  would  be  unwise  to  trust  to 
any  man's  autobiography  —  though  Gibbon's  is  as  frank  as 
most  There  are  points  on  which  vanity  will  say  too  much, 
and  perhaps  others  on  which  modesty  will  say  too  little. 

Gibbon  was  descended,  he  tells  us,  from  a  Kentish  family, 
ancient,  though  not  illustrious.  His  grandfather  was  a  man 
of  ability,  and  an  enterprising  roerchant  of  London ;  one  of 
the  commissioners  of  customs  in  the  latter  years  of  Queen 
Anne  ;  and,  in  the  judgment  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  as  deeply 
versed  in  the  "  finance  and  commerce  of  England  "  as  any 
man  of  his  time.  He  was  not  always  wise,  however,  either 
for  himself  or  his  country ;  for  he  became  deeply  involved 
in  the  South  Sea  scheme,  and  lost  the  ample  wealtli  he  had 
amassed,  at  the  explosion  of  that  tremendous  bubble  (1720). 
As  a  director  of  the  company,  he  was  suspected  of  fraudu- 
lent complicity,  was  taken  into  custody,  and  heavily  fined ; 
but  £10,000  were  allowed  him  out  of  the  wreck  of  his  £60,- 
000,  and  with  this  his  skill  and  enterprise  soon  constructed 
(242) 


EDWAKD    GIBBON.  243 

a  second  fortune.*  He  died  at  Putney  in  1736,  leaving  the 
bulk  of  his  property  to  his  two  daughters  —  nearly  disinher- 
iting his  only  son,  the  father  of  the  historian,  for  having 
married  against  his  wishes.  This  son  (by  name  Edward) 
was  educated  at  Westminster  and  Cambridge,  but  never 
took  a  degree ;  travelled,  became  member  of  parhament, 
first  for  Petersfield,  then  for  Southampton  ;  joined  the  party 
against  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  and  (as  his  son  confesses,  not 
much  to  his  father's  honor)  was  animated  in  so  doing  by 
"  private  revenge,"  against  the  supposed  "  oppressor  "  of  his 
family  in  the  South  Sea  affair.  If  so,  revenge,  as  usual, 
was  blind ;  for  Walpole  sought  rather  to  moderate  than  in- 
flame public  feeling  against  the  projectors. 

His  celebrated  son  was  born  at  Putney,  Surrey,  27th  of 
■  April,  1737.  His  mother  was  the  daughter  of  a  London 
merchant.  Gibbon  was  the  eldest  of  a  family  of  six  sons 
arid  a  daughter,  yet  was  the  only  one  who  survived  child- 
hood ;  and  his  own  life  in  youth  hung  by  so  mere  a  thread 
as  to  be  a  thousand  times  despaired  of.  His  mother,  be- 
tween domestic  cares  and  constant  infirmities  (which,  how- 
ever, did  not  pi'event  an  occasional  plunge  into  fashionable 
dissipation  in  compliance  with  her  husband's  wishes),  did 
but  little  for  him.  His  true  mother,  if  the  expression  may 
be  permitted,  was  his  maiden  aunt  —  Catherine  Porten  by 
name  —  who  tenderly  nursed  his  infancy,  and,  whenever  his 
feeble  health  allowed,  took  care  that  his  mind  should  not  be 
neglected.     "  Many  anxious  and  solitary  days,"  says  Gibbon, 

1  No  less  than  three  of  the  family  intermarried  with  the  Actons  of 
Shropshire.  "  I  am  thus  connected,"  says  Gibbon,  "by  a  triple  alli- 
ance with  that  ancient  and  loyal  family  of  Shropshire  baronets.  It 
consisted  about  that  time  of  seven  brothers,  all  of  gigantic  stature ; 
one  of  whom,  a  pigmy  of  six  feet,  two  inches,  confessed  himself  the 
last  and  least  of  the  seven ;  adding,  in  the  true  spirit  of  party,  that 
such  men  were  not  born  since  the  revolution."  —  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p. 
10. 


244  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

"  did  she  consume  with  patient  trial  of  every  mode  of  relief 
and  amusement.  Many  wakeful  nights  did  she  sit  by  my 
bedside  in  trembling  expectation  that  each  hour  would  be 
my  last."  ^  At  seven  he  was  committed  for  eighteen  months 
to  the  care  of  a  private  tutor,  John  Kirkby  by  name,  and 
the  author,  among  other  things,  of  a  "  philosophical  fiction" 
entitled  the  Life  of  Automathes.  The  illustrious  pupil 
speaks  gratefully  of  his  tutor,  and  doubtless  truly,  so  far  as 
he  could  trust  the  impressions  of  his  childhood.  Of  the 
"  philosophical  fiction  "  he  says,  "  The  author  is  not  entitled 
to  the  merit  of  invention  since  he  has  blended  the  English 
story  of  Rohinson  Crusoe  with  the  Arabian  romance  of  Hai 
Ebn  Tokhdan  which  he  might  have  read  in  the  Latin  ver- 
sion of  Pococke.  In  the  Automathes  I  cannot  praise  either 
the  depth  of  thought  or  elegance  of  style ;  but  the  book  is 
not  devoid  of  entertainment  or  instruction."  ^ 

At  nine  (1746),  during  a  "lucid  interval  of  health,"  he  was 
sent  to  a  school  at  Kingston-on-Thames  ;  but  the  usual  breaks 
of  sickness  intervened,  and  his  progress,  by  his  own  confes- 
sion, was  slow  and*  unsatisfactory.  "  My  timid  reserve  was 
astonished  by  the  crowd  and  tumult  of  the  school ;  the  want 
of  strength  and  activity  disqualified  me  for  the  sports  of  the 

play-field By  the  common  methods  of  discipline,  at 

the  expense  of  many  tears  and  some  blood,  I  purchased  the 
knowledge  of  the  Latin  syntax ;  and  not  long  since  I  was 
possessed  of  the  dirty  volumes  of  Phcedrus  and  Cornelius  Ne- 
pos  which  I  painfully  construed  and  darkly  understood."  * 

In  1747  his  mother  died,  and  he  was  taken  home. 
After  a  short  time  his  father  removed  from  Putney  to 
the  "rustic  solitude"  of  Buriton,  and  young  Gibbon  ac- 
companied him.  There  probably  his  health  was  benefited, 
and  his  mind  certainly  re.ceived  its  first  decided  stimulus. 
In  these  early  years,  under  the  care  of  his  devoted  aunt,  he 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  19.  2  jb.  p.  21,  22.  «  lb.  p.  22. 


EDWARD    GIBBOK.  245 

first  acquired,  he  tells  us,  that  passionate  love  of  reading 
"  which  he  would  not  exchange  for  all  the  treasures  of  In- 
dia." He  read  at  will ;  and  there  are  minds  to  which  it  is 
the  best  possible  schooling.  To  be  turned  loose  to  graze  in 
the  free  mountain  pasture,  to  "  browse "  at  pleasure  —  as 
Charles  Lamb  expresses  it  —  in  a  library  of  wholesome  liter- 
ature, tends  more  than  any  thing  else,  if  not  to  discipline,  to 
stimulate  their  powers  ;  and  often  not  only  tinctures,  but  de- 
termines the  whole  future.  It  was  so  with  Gibbon.  After  de- 
tailing the  circumstances  which  "  unlocked"  for  him  the  door 
of  his  grandfather's  "  tolerable  library,"  he  says,  "  I  turned 
over  many  English  pages  of  poetry  and  romance,  of  history 
and  travels.  Where  a  title  attracted  my  eye,  without  fear  or 
awe  I  snatched  the  volume  from  the  shelf."  *  In  1749,  in  his 
twelfth  year,  he  was  sent  to  Westminster,  still  residing,  how- 
ever, with  his  aunt,  who,  unwilling  to  live  a  life  of  depend- 
ence, had  opened  a  boarding-house  for  Westminster  school. 
"In  the  space  of  two  years  (1749-50),  interrupted  by  dan- 
ger and  debility,  I  painfully  climbed  into  the  third  form  ;  and 
my  riper  age  was  left  to  acquire  the  beauties  of  the  Latin 
and  the  rudiments  of  the  Greek  tongue.'"^  The  continual 
attacks  of  sickness  which  had  retarded  his  progress  induced 
his  aunt,  by  medical  advice,  to  take  him  to  Bath  ;  but  the 
mineral  waters  had  no  effect.  He  then  resided  for  a  time  in 
the  house  of  a  physician  in  Winchester ;  the  physician  did 
as  little  as  the  mineral  waters ;  and,  after  a  further  trial  of 
Bath,  he  once  more  returned  to  Putney,  and  made  a  last  fu- 
tile attempt  to  study  at  Westminster.  Finally,  it  was  re- 
solved that  he  would  never  be  able  to  encounter  the  discipline 
of  a  school ;  and  casual  instructors,  at  various  times  and 
places,  were  provided  for  him.  The  snatches  of  his  youth 
that  could  be  given  to  mental  effort  were  doubtless  pretty 
well  filled  up  by  himself,  and,  for  the  reasons  already  as- 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  i8.  2  lb.  p.  27. 

21* 


246  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

signed,  perhaps  not  unpropitiously  in  relation  to  the  peculiar 
character  of  his  intellect  and  the  requirements  of  his  subse- 
quent career. 

Towards  his  sixteenth  year  he  tells  us  that  all  his  infirmi- 
ties suddenly  vanished.  "  Nature,"  as  he  frigidly  expresses 
it,  "  displayed  in  my  favor  her  mysterious  energies."  His 
education  was  now  resumed  under  the  roof  of  Francis,  the 
translator  of  Horace ;  of  whose  negligence  as  a  tutor  the 
historian  speaks  most  strongly.  "  The  translator  of  Horace," 
says  he,  "  might  have  taught  me  to  relish  the  Latin  poets,  had 
not  my  friends  discovered  in  a  few  weeks  that  he  preferred 
the  pleasures  of  London  to  the  instruction  of  his  pupils."  * 

Gibbon  was  then  sent  to  finish  his  education  (before  it 
had  been  properly  begun)  at  Oxford,  where  he  matriculated 
as  gentleman  commoner  of  Magdalen  College,  April,  1752. 
His  description  of  his  intellectual  condition  at  that  time  is 
curious  enough :  "  I  arrived  there  with  a  stock  of  erudition 
which  might  have  puzzled  a  doctor,  and  a  degree  of  igno- 
rance of  which  a  school-boy  might  have  been  ashamed."  It 
was  natural.  He  had  read  extensively,  though  at  random ; 
and,  his  memory  being  tenacious,  he  had  amassed  much  knowl- 
edge, though  of  a  very  miscellaneous  character.  It  seems, 
however,  that  during  the  three  previous  years  his  youthful 
mind  had  received  a  determinate  direction,  either  from  its 
own  secret  tendencies,  or  from  the  class  of  works  on  which 
he  accidentally  lighted,  or  more  probably  from  both  causes. 
His  taste  was  already  fixed  where  it  never  afterwards 
wavered  —  on  history. 

His  list  of  the  books  which,  during  the  three  years  of 
self-prompted  and  wandering  study,  he  had  more  or  less 
devoured,  is  amazingly  miscellaneous  ;  but  we  have  no  space 
to  give  it.  The  reader  may  find  it  in  the  Memoirs.  Many 
of  them  both  for  their  extent  and  dryness,  would  have  been 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  t.  p.  28. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  247 

repulsive  enough  to  most  lads  of  his  age.  Most  of  the 
classical  historians  accessible  in  translations,  not  forgetting  a 
"  ragged  Procopius  "  which  chanced  to  fall  in  his  way,  and 
"  many  crude  lumps,"  as  he  oddly  expresses  it,  of  the  most 
voluminous  modern  historians,  as  Davila,  Rapin,  Father 
Paul,  Machiavel,  were  hastily  gulped  —  giving  in  those  days, 
doubtless,  but  little  trouble  in  the  digestion.  "  1  devoured 
them,"  he  says,  "  like  so  many  novels ;  and  I  swallowed 
with  the  same  voracious  appetite  the  description  of  India 
and  China,  of  Mexico  and  Peru."  ^  At  the  same  period  his 
fancy  kindled  with  the  first  glimpses  into  oriental  history,  the 
wild  "  barbaric "  charm  of  which  he  never  ceased  to  feel. 
India,  China,  Arabia,  and  especially  the  career  of  Mohammed, 
successively  attracted  his  attention.  Ockley's  book  on  the 
Saracens  "first  opened  his  eyes  "  to  this  last  subject;  and 
with  his  characteristic  ardor  of  literary  research,  he  forth witli 
plunged  into  the  French  of  D'Herbelot,  and  the  Latin  of 
Pococke's  version  of  Ahulfaragius  —  sometimes  "  guessing," 
and  sometimes  understanding  —  now  swimming,  now  wading 
up  to  his  chin,  and  now  plunging  out  of  his  depth  altogether. 
His  first  introduction  to  the  historic  scenes  which  afterwards 
formed  the  passion  of  his  life,  took  place  at  the  same  period. 
In  1751,  he  notes  his  "discovery  "  of  a  "  common  book  "  — 
Echard's  Roman  History.^  "  To  me,"  he  says,  "  the  reigns 
of  the  successors  of  Constantino  were  absolutely  new  ;  and  I 
was  immersed  in  the  passage  of  the  Goths  over  the  Danube, 
when  the  summons  of  the  dinner  bell  reluctantly  dragged 
me  from  my  intellectual  feast." 

He  seems  even  then  to  have  adopted  the  plan  Df  study  he 
followecT  in  after-life  and  recommended  in  his.  Essai  sur 
V Etude  ;  that  is,  of  letting  his  subject  rather  than  his  author 
determine  his  course  ;  of  suspending  the  perusal  of  a  book 
to  reflect,  and  to  compare  the  statements  with  those  of  other 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  30.  2  jb.  p.  30 


248  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

authors ;  so  that  he  often  read  portions  of  fifty  volumes 
while  mastering  one.  Where  the  mind  has  vigor  and  per- 
severance to  adopt  this  course,  it  is,  without  doubt,  the  most 
profitable  of  all  modes  of  reading.  A  man  rarely  forgets 
what  he  has  taken  so  much  trouble  -tp  acquire.  The  chase 
itself,  too,  and  the  variety  of  forms  in  which  knowledge  is 
presented,  afford  a  thousand  links  by  which  association  aids 
memory. 

But  Gibbon's  huge  wallet  of  scraps  stood  him  in  little  stead 
at  the  trim  banquets  to  which  he  was  invited  at  Oxford ;  and 
the  wandering  habit  by  which  he  had  filled  it  absolutely  un- 
fitted him  to  be  a  guest.  He  was  not  well  grounded  in  any 
of  the  elementary  branches  which  are  essential  to  univer- 
sity studies,  and  to  all  success  in  their  prosecution.  It  was 
natural,  therefore,  that  he  should  dislike  the  university,  and 
as  natural  that  the  university  should  dislike  him.  Many  of 
his  complaints  of  the  system  were  certainly  just ;  but  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  any  university  system  would  have  been 
profitable  to  him,  considering  his  antecedents.  He  com- 
plains of  his  tutors,  too,  and  in  one  case  with  abundant  rea- 
son ;  but,  by  his  own  confession,  they  had  equal  reason  to 
complain  of  him,  for  he  indulged  in  gay  society,  and  kept 
late  hours.  His  observations,  however,  on  the  defects  of  our 
university  system  in  general,  are  acute  and  well  worth  pon- 
dering, however  little  relevant  to  his  own  case.  Many  of 
these  defects,  in  the  case  of  our  own  universities,  have  been 
removed  since  his  time,  and  some  very  recently.  He  re- 
mained at  Magdalen  about  fourteen  months.  "  To  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford,"  he  says,  "  I  acknowledge  no  obligation  ; 
and  she  will  as  cheerfully  renounce  me  for  a  son  *as  I  am 
willing  to  disclaim  her  for  a  mother.  I  spent  fourteen 
months  at  Magdalen  College ;  they  proved  the  fourteen 
months  the  most  idle  and  unprofitable  in  my  whole  life.* 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  34. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  249 

But  little  as  he  did  as  a  student,  he  already  meditated  au- 
thorship. In  the  first  long  vacation  —  "  during  which,"  he 
says,  (whimsically  enough,)  "  his  taste  for  books  began  to 
revive,"  —  he  resolved  to  write  a  treatise  on  The  Age  of  Se- 
sostris  ;  *  in  which  (and  it  was  characteristic)  his  chief  object 
was  to  investigate  the  probable  epoch  of  that  semi-mythical 
monarch's  reign.  "  Unprovided  with  original  learning,  unin- 
formed in  the  habits  of  thinking,  unskilled  in  the  arts  of 
composition,  I  resolved  to  write  a  book."  He  long  after- 
wards (November,  1772),  but  wisely,  no  doubt,  "  committed 
the  sheets  to  the  flames."  Literary  ambition  almost  uniformly 
displays  its  early  energy  in  some  such  crude  project,  and 
Gibbon  was  no  exception  to  the  rule.  This  period  of  his 
life  was  also  signalized  by  another  premature  attempt  to 
solve  difficulties  beyond  the  age  of  sixteen.  He  read  Mid- 
dleton's  Free  Inquiry ;  and  this,  strange  to  say,  repelled  him 
from  Pi'otestantism,  and  gave  him  a  bias  towards  Rome  ;  he 
read  Bossuet's  Variations  of  Protestantism,  and  Exposition 
of  Catholic  Doctrine,  and  these  completed  JjibBonversion, 
"  and  surely,"  he  adds,  "  I  fell  by  a  noble  Y^Sn..'"  In  this 
notable  victory,  however,  of  the  Bishop  of  Meaux  over  a  youth 
of  sixteen,  there  is  nothing  wonderful ;  nor  was  l^^suet 
the  only  champion  of  Rome  who  helped  to  lay  him  1™,  for 
he  attributes  not  a  little  to  the  perusal  of  the  works  of  Par- 
sons, the  Jesuit.  But  the  inexperience,  perhaps  wayward- 
ness of  youth,  and  impatience  to  have  doubts  hushed  and 
quelled,  if  not  removed,  had  probably  more  to  do  with  this 
transient  conquest,  than  all  the  above  controvertists  put 
together. 
/•  No  sooner  converted,  than  he  confessed.  He  certainly 
practised  none  of  the  reserve  of  the  Jesuit  to  whom  he  had 
been  so  much  indebted.  On  June  8,  1753,  he  records  that 
he  "  privately  abjured  the  heresies  "  of  his  childhood  before 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  41. 


250  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

a  Catholic  priest  in  London,  and  announced  the  same  to  his 
father  in  a  somewhat  grandiloquent  effusion,  which  his 
spiritual  adviser  much  approved,  and  in  which  it  is  probable 
he  had  some  share.  "  Gibbon,"  says  Lord  Sheffield,  "  de- 
scribed the  letter  to  his  father,  announcing  his  conversion,  as 
written  with  all  the  pomp,  the  dignity,  and  self-satisfaction 
of  a  martyr."  ^  His  father  heard  with  indignant  surprise  of 
this  act  of  juvenile  apostasy,  and  indiscreetly  giving  vent  to 
his  wrath,  the  authorities  of  Oxford  dismissed  the  neophyte. 
It  is  curious  to  read  Gibbon's  rather  complacent  estimate  in 
after-life  of  this  "  sacrifice  of  self-interest  to  conscience." 
It  is  expressed  in  terms  which  might  almost  tempt  one  to 
think  that  he  scarcely  contemplated  his  subsequent  changes 
with  equal  satisfaction.  Yet  he  also  seems  to  have  felt  that 
the  infirmities  of  reason  which  this  escapade  implied  needed 
some  apology,  and  that  the  applause  of  conscience  hardly  com- 
pensated for  the  reflections  on  his  logic.  He  therefore  justi- 
fies his  apostasy  by  the  parallel  vacillations  of  Chillingworth 
and  Bayle.  "  He  could  not  blush,"  he  says,  "  that  his  tender 
mind  was  entangled  in  the  sophistry  which  had  seduced  the 
acute  and  manly  understandings  of  a  Chillingworth  or  a 
Ba;^ ;  "  2  of  which  he  takes  care  to  inform  us  that  the  latter 
wa^venty-two,  and  the  former  of  the  "  ripe  age  "  of  twenty- 
eight  years,  when  caught  in  the  meshes  of  Romanism. 

In  short,  he  attached  rather  too  much  importance  to  the 
fluctuations  of  sixteen.  As  a  fact  in  the  history  of  his  own 
mind,  however,  it  is  of  interest ;  in  any  other  light,  of  nq 
importance  whatever.  "To  my  present  feelings,"  he  tells 
us  in  his  Memoirs,  "  it  seems  incredible  that  I  should  ever 
believe  that  I  believed  in  transubstantiation,"  that  is  if  he 
were  interpreted  rigorously,  "  he  could  not  believe  that  he 
could  ever  believe  that  he  believed  in  transubstantiation." 
If  that  were  his  meaning,  he  ha*d  certainly  cured  himself  of 
all  superfluous  facility  of  belief. 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  46.  ^  lb.  p.  47. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  251 

It  was  now  high  time  that  his  education,  so  nearly  finished 
in  name,  should  be  begun  in  earnest.  But  as  dhe  chief  ob- 
ject of  his  father  was  to  secure  in  the  course  of  it  his  recon- 
version to  Protestantism,  he  was.  consigned  (1753)  to  the 
care  of  a  Calvinist  minister  at  Lausanne  —  a  M.  Pavilliard, 
of  whom  Gibbon  speaks  in  strong  terms  of  affection  and 
esteem,  and  who  appears  to  have  deserved  them.  There 
was  one  slight  obstacle  to  be  sure,  to  the  intercourse  of  tutor 
and  pupil ;  M.  Pavilliard  appears  to  have  known  little  of 
English,  and  young  Gibbon  knew  nothing  of  French.  But 
this  difficulty  was  soon  removed  by  the  pupil's  diligence ; 
the  very  exigencies  of  his  situation  were  of  service  to  him, 
and  he  studied  the  language  with  such  success,  that  at  the 
close  of  his  five  years'  exile  he  declares  that  he  "  spontane- 
ously thought "  in  French  rather  than  in  English,  and  that 
it  had  become  more  familiar  to  "  ear,  pen,  and  tongue."  It 
is  well  known  that  in  after  years  he  had  doubts  whether  he 
should  not  compose  his  great  work  in  French;  and  it  is 
certain  that  his  familiarity  with  that  language,  in  s[)ite  of 
considerable  efforts  to  counteract  its  effects,  tinged  his  style 
to  the  last.' 

Under  the  judicious  regulations  of  his  new  tutor  a  sys- 
tematic course  of  study  was  marked  out,  and  was  most  ar- 
dently prosecuted.  The  pupil's  progress  was  proportion- 
ably  rapid.  With  the  systematic  study  of  the  Latin  and 
Greek  classics  he  conjoined  that  of  French  literature,  which 
he  read  largely  though  somewhat  indiscriminately. 

Nor  was  the  object  his  father  primarily  had  at  heart  less 
effectually  attained.  To  his  large  reading  of  the  classics  he 
added  a  diligent  study  of  logic  in  the  prolix  system  of 
Crousaz,  and  further  invigorated  his  reasoning  powers,  as 
well  as  enlarged  his  knowledge  of  metaphysics  and  juris- 
prudence by  the  perusal  of  Locke,  Grotius,  and  Montes- 
quieu. He  also  read  about  this  time  Pascal's  Provincial 
Letters,  and  at  sixty  he  declares  he  had  reperused  therii 


252  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

almost  every  year  with  new  pleasure.  It  is  one  of  the 
"  three  books  "  which,  by  his  own  confession,  probably  con- 
tributed, in  a  "  special  sense,  to  form  the  historian  of  the 
Roman  Empire."  From  Pascal,  he  flatters  himself,  he 
"learned  to  manage  the  weapons  of  grave  and  temperate 
irony,  even  on  subjects  of  ecclesiastical  solemnity ; "  a  grand 
mistake  as  regards  both  the  adroitness  with  which  he  used 
and  the  subject  on  which  he  employed  the  weapon.  There 
is  as  much  difference  between  the  light  grace  of  Pascal's 
irony  and  the  heavy,  labored  movement  of  Gibbon's,  as 
between  an  Arab  courser  and  a  Flanders  war-horse.  He 
also  studied  mathematics  to  some  extent,  though  purely  in 
compliance  with  his  father's  wishes.  He  advanced  as  far 
as  the  conic  sections  in  the  treatise  of  L'Hopital.  He  as- 
sures us  that  his  tutor  did  not  complain  of  any  inaptitude 
on  the  pupil's  part,  and  that  the  pupil  was  as  happily  uncon- 
scious of  any  on  his  own  ;  but  here  he  broke  off.  He  adds, 
what  is  no^  quite  clear  from  one  who  so  frankly  acknowl- 
edges his  Imiited  acquaintance  with  the  science,  that  he  had 
reason  to  congratulate  himself  that  he  knew  no  more.  "  As 
soon,"  he  says,  "  as  I  understood  the  principles,  I  relin- 
quished forever  the  pursuit  of  the  mathematics ;  nor  can  I 
lament  that  I  desisted  before  my  mind  was  hardened  by  the 
habit  of  rigid  demonstration,  so  destructive  of  the  finer  feel- 
ings of  moral  evidence,  which  must,  however,  determine  the 
actions, and  d^inions  of  ijur  lives."  ^ 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  sort  of  evidence  with  which 
the  future  historiafl  was  called  to  deal  has  to  do  with  proba- 
bilities and  not  rigid  "  demonstration  ; "  but  whether  he  would 
not  have  sometimes  compute  its  elements  with  more  im- 
partiality and  precision  if  he  had  had  a  little  further  train- 
ing in  the  exact  sciences,  may  be  a  question. 

Under  the  new  influences  which  were  brought  to  bear  on 

*  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  66. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  253 

him,  he  resumed  in  less  than  a  twelvemonth  his  Protestant- 
ism. "  He  is  willing,"  h.e  says,  to  allow  M.  Pavilliard  a 
"  handsome  share  in  his  reconversion,"  though  he  stoutly 
avows  that  it  was  principally  due  to  his  own  "  solitary  reflec- 
tions." He  particularly  congratulated  himself  on  having 
discovered  a  "  philosophical  argument "  against  "  transubstan- 
tiation."  It  was  "  that  the  text  of  Scripture  which  seems  to 
inculcate  the  real  presence  is  attested  only  by  a  single  sense 
—  our  sight ;  while  the  real  presence  itself  is  disproved  by 
three  of  our  senses  —  the  sight,  the  touch,  and  the  taste."  ^ 
It  is  possible  that  the  unconscious  influence  of  the  threats 
of  disinheritance,  and  the  exchange  of  his  "  handsome  apart- 
ments at  Magdalen  "  for  the  meanness  and  discomforts  of 
his  Swiss  home,  may  have  been  quite  as  efficacious  as  this 
curious  enthymeme.  Thus  was  he  converted  to  Romanism 
in  his  sixteenth  year,  and  recanted  his  recantation  in  his 
seventeenth.  The  changes  were  doubtless  important  to 
him,  and  it  was  natural  that  he  should  give  them  some 
prominence  in  his  "  autobiography ; "  but  relatively  to  the 
great  questions  they  involve,  the  oscillations  of  such  a 
youthful  mind,  however  intelligent,  are  of  as  little  moment 
as  the  transfer  of  a  cypher  from  one  side  of  an  equation  to 
the  other. 

Two  circumstances  specially  signalized  his  residence  at 
Lausanne  —  he  saw  Voltaire,  and  he  fell  in  love.  "  Virgil- 
ium  vidi  tantum"  says  he ;  but  his  admiration  of  Voltaire's 
writings  was  great,  and  exerted  a  rather  equivocal  influence 
on  his  poetic  tastes.  It  led  to  an  excessive  estimate  of  the 
French  drama,  and  abated,  he  scruples  not  to  declare,  his 
"  idolatry  for  the  gigantic  genius  of  Shakspeare."  Vol- 
taire's writings  also  probably  gave  him  a  false  bias  in  mat- 
ters of  infinitely  more  importance  than  those  of  literature. 

His  love  aifair  —  his  first  and  only  one  —  was  transient 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  58. 
22 


254  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

enough.  The  young  lady,  in  the  bloom  of  sixteen,  the 
daughter  of  a  Swiss  pastor,  was  Mademoiselle  Curchod, 
afterwards  the  wife  of  the  celebrated  M.  Necker.  She 
was,  as  Gibbon  declares  (and  we  know  it  on  better  testi- 
mony than  a  lover's  eyes),  beautiful,  intelligent,  and  ac- 
complished. Her  charms,  however,  do  not  seem  to  have 
made  any  indelible  impression  on  our  young  student,  whose 
sensibility,  to  say  the  truth,  was  never  very  profound.  On 
his  father's  expressing  his  disapprobation,  he  surrendered 
the  object  of  his  affection  with  as  little  resistance  as  he  had 
surrendered  his  Romanism.  "  I  sighed,"  he  says,  "  as  a 
lover,  but  obeyed  as  a  son."  It  would  be  invidious  to  in- 
stitute comparisons  as  to  the  merit  of  "  faithful  love "  and 
filial  devotion ;  but,  if  the  one  be  unrewarded  by  fortune, 
and  the  other  stimulated  by  menaces,  it  is  a  difficult  choice 
no  doubt,  for  any  but  a  hero  ;  and  Gibbon  neither  then  nor 
afterwards  was  a  hero.  "  Without  my  father's  consent,"  he 
plaintively  says,  "  I  was  destitute  and  helpless." 

Unwearied  application  to  study  was  the  best  "  remedium 
amoris"  if  indeed  he  stood  in  need  of  any  remedy.  In  any 
case,  his  diligence  was  most  commendable,  and  no  one  can 
read  the  account  of  the  three  last  years  spent  at  Lausanne, 
and  especially  the  all  but  incredible  toils  of  the  last  eight 
months,  without  perceiving  that  the  foundations  of  that  vast 
erudition  which  the  Decline  and  Fall  demanded,  were 
effectually  laid ;  or  hesitate  to  give  our  student  a  worthy 
place  with  the  Scaligers,  Huets,  and  Leibnitzes,  of  the  pre- 
ceding century.  Though  there  may  be  a  little  unconscious 
exaggeration  in  his  statement  of  the  achievements  of  these 
miraculous  eight  months,  we  are  tempted  to  give  it  in  a  note 
for  the  encouragement  or  despair  of  other  youthful  students.^ 

1  He  says  in  his  Journal,  December  4,  1755,  —  "In  finishing  this 
year,  I  must  remark  how  favorable  it  was  to  my  studies.  In  the 
space  of  eight  months,  from  the  beginning  of  April,  I  learned  the 
principles  of  drawing ;  made  myself  complete  master  of  the  French 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  255 

In  1758  he  returned  to  England,  and  was  kindly  re- 
ceived at  home.  But  he  found  a  stepmother  there  ;  and 
this  apparition  on  his  father's  hearth  at  first  rather  appalled 
him.  The  cordial  and  gentle  manners  of  IMrs.  Gibbon, 
however,  and  her  unremitted  study  of  his  happiness,  won 
him  from  his  first  prejudices,  and  gave  her  a  permanent 
place  both  in  his  esteem  and  affection.  He  seems  to  have 
been  much  indulged,  and  led  a  very  pleasant  life  of  it ;  he 
pleased  himself  in  moderate  excursions,  frequented  the  theatre, 
mingled,  though  not  very  often,  in  society  ;  was  sometimes 
a  little  extravagant,  and  sometimes  a  little  dissipated,  but 
never  lost  the  benefits  of  his  Lausanne  exile ;  and  with  the 
exception  of  a  few  transient  youthful  irregularities,  settled 
into  a  sober,  discreet,  calculating  epicurean  philosopher,  who 
sought  the  summum  honum  of  man  in  temperate,  regulated, 
and  elevated  pleasure.  The  two  years  after  his  return  to 
England  he  spent  principally  at  his  father's  country-seat  at 
Buriton,  in  Hampshire,  only  nine  months  being  given  to  the 
metropolis.  He  has  left  an  amusing  account  of  his  employ- 
ments in  the  country,  where  his  love  of  study  was  at  once 
inflamed  by  a  librai-y  rich  enough  to  make  him  contrast  its 
treasures  with  the  poverty  of  Lausanne,  and  checked  by  the 
necessary  interruptions  of  his  otherwise  happy  domestic  life. 
After  breakfast  "  he  was  expected,"  he  says,  "  to  spend  an 

and  Latin  languages,  with  which  I  was  very  superficially  acquainted 
before,  and  wrote  and  translated  a  great  deal  in  both  ;  read  Cicero's 
Epistles  Ad  Familiares,  his  Brutus,  all  his  Orations,  his  Dialogues 
De  Amidtia  and  De  Senectute ;  Terence,  twice ;  and  Pliny's  Epistles. 
In  French,  Giannone's  Hiitory  of  Naples,  and  I'Abb^  Bannier's  Mi/- 
thology,  and  M.  De  Bochat's  Memoires  sur  la  Suisse,  and  wrote  a  very 
ample  relation  of  my  tour.  I  liicewise  began  to  study  Greek,  and 
went  through  the  grammar.  I  began  to  make  very  large  collections 
of  what  I  read.  But  what  I  esteem  most  of  all,  from  the  perusal  and 
meditation  of  De  Crousaz's  Logic,  I  not  only  understood  the  princi- 
ples of  that  science,  but  formed  my  mind  to  a  habit  of  thinking  and 
reasoning  I  had  no  idea  of  before."  —  Memoirs,  p.  61 . 


256  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

hour  with  Mrs.  Gibbon  —  read  the  paper  to  his  father  in 
the  afternoon  —  was  often  called  down  to  entertain  idle 
visitors  —  and,  worst  of  all,  was  periodically  compelled  to 
return  the  visits  of  their  more  distant  neighbors."  He  says 
he  dreaded  the  "  recurrence  of  the  full  moon,"  which  was 
the  period  generally  selected  for  the  more  convenient  ac- 
complishment of  such  formidable  excursions. 

His  father's  library,  though  large  in  comparison  with  that 
he  commanded  at  Lausanne,  contained,  he  says,  "  much 
trash,"  which  he  gradually  weeded  out,  and  transformed  it 
at  length  into  that  "  numerous  and  select "  library  which 
was  "  the  foundation  of  his  works,  and  the  best  comfort  of  his 
life  at  home  and  abroad."  No  sooner  had  he  returned  home 
than  he.  began  the  work  of  accumulation,  and  records  that, 
on  the  receipt  of  his  first  quarter's  allowance,  a  large  share 
was  appropriated  to  his  literary  wants.  "  He  could  never 
forget,"  he  declares,  "  the  joy  with  which  he  exchanged  a 
bank-note  of  twenty  pounds  for  the  twenty  volumes  of  the 
Memoirs  of  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions."  It  may  not  be 
unprofitable  here  to  remark  that  the  principles  on  which  he 
selected  his  admirable  library  are  worthy  of  every  student's 
attention.  "  I  am  not  conscious,"  says  he,  "  of  having  ever 
bought  a  book  from  a  motive  of  ostentation ;  every  volume 
before  it  was  deposited  on  the  shelf  was  either  read  or  suffi- 
ciently examined."  The  account  he  gives  of  his  mode  of 
study  is  also  deeply  instructive,  but  there  is  not  space  for  it 
here. 

In  London  he  seems  to  have  seen  but  little  select  society — 
partly  because  his  father's  habits  opened  to  him  but  little 
that  he  cared  for  —  partly  from  his  own  reserve  and  timid- 
ity, increased  by  his  foreign  education.  This  had  made 
English  habits  unfamiliar  and  the  very  language  in  some 
degree  strange.  And  thus  it  was  that  he  draws  that  inter- 
esting picture  of  the  literary  recluse  among  the  crowds  of 
London:    "  While   coaches   were    rattling    through   Bond 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  257 

Street,  I  have  passed  many  a  solitary  evening  in  my  lodg- 
ing with  my  books.  My  studies  were  sometimes  interrupted 
with  a  sigh,  which  I  breathed  towards  Lausanne  ;  and  on 
the  approach  of  spring  I  withdrew  without  reluctance  from 
the  noisy  and  extensive  scene  of  crowds  without  company, 
and  dissipation  without  pleasure."  ^  He  became  acquainted, 
however,  with  Mallet  —  by  courtesy  called  the  "  poet  "  — ■ 
and  through  him  gained  access  to  Lady  Hervey's  circle, 
where  a  congenial  admiration,  not  to  say  affectation,  of 
French  manners  and  literature,  made  him  a  welcome  guest. 
In  one  respect  Mallet  gave  him  good  counsel.  He  advised 
him  to  addict  himself  to  an  arduous  study  of  the  more 
idiomatic  English  writers  —  Swift  and  Addison,  for  example 
—  with  a  view  to  unlearn  his  foreign  idiom,  and  recover  his 
half-forgotten  vernacular ;  —  a  task,  which  he  never  per- 
fectly accomplished.  Much  as  he  admired  these  writers, 
Hume  and  Robertson  were  still  greater  favorites,  as  well 
from  their  subject  as  for  their  style.  Of  his  admiration  of 
Hume's  style  —  of  its  nameless  grace  of  simple  elegance  — 
he  has  left  us  a  strong  expression,  when  he  tells  us  that  it 
often  compelled  him  to  close  the  historian's  volumes  with  a 
feeling  of  despair. 

In  1^61  Gibbon,  after  many  delays,  and  with  many  flut- 
terings  of  hope  and  fear,  gave  to  the  world,  in  French,  his 
maiden  publication,  composed  two  years  before.  It  was 
partly  in  compliance  with  his  father's  wishes,  who  thought 
that  the  proof  of  some  literary  talent  might  introduce  him 
favorably  to  public  notice,  and  "  secure  the  recommendation 
of  his  friends."  But  in  yielding  to  paternal  authority. 
Gibbon  frankly  owns  that  he  complied,  "  like  a  pious  son  — 
with  the  wish  of  his  own  heart." 

The  subject  of  the  JEssaisurV Etude  de  la  Litterature  was 
suggested,  its  author  says,  by  a  refinen^nt  of  vanity  —  "  the 


1  Memoirs 'Yol.  I.  p.  81. 
22* 


258  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

desire  of  justifying  and  praising  the  object  of  a  favorite  pur- 
suit." Partly  owing  to  its  being  written  in  French,  partly 
to  its  character,  the  essay  excited  more  attention  abroad  than 
at  home.  Gibbon  has  criticized  it  with  the  utmost  frank- 
ness, not  to  say  severity,  but  after  every  abatement,  it  is 
unquestionably  a  surprising  effort  for  a  mind  so  young,  and 
contains  many  thoughts  which  would  not  have  disgraced 
a  thinker  or  scholar  of  much  maturer  age.  The  account  of 
its  first  reception  and  subsequent  history  in  England  de- 
serves to  be  cited  as  amongst  the  curiosities  of  literature. 
"  In  England,"  he  says,  "  it  was  received  with  cold  indiffer- 
ence, little  read,  and  speedily  forgotten  ;  a  small  impression 
was  slowly  dispersed ;  the  bookseller  murmured,  and  the 
author  (had  his  feelings  been  more  exquisite)  might  have 
wept  over  the  blunders  and  baldness  of  the  English  transla- 
tion. The  publication  of  my  history  Jif teen  years  afterwards 
revived  the  memory  of  my  first  performance,  and  the  essay 
was  eagerly  sought  in  the  shops.  But  I  refused  the  per- 
mission which  Becket  solicited  of  reprinting  it :  the  public 
curiosity  was  imperfectly  satisfied  by  a  pirated  copy  of  the 
booksellers  of  Dublin ;  and  when  a  copy  of  the  original 
edition  has  been  discovered  in  a  sale,  the  primitive  value  of 
half  a  crown  has  risen  to  the  fanciful  price  of  a  gufhea  or 
thirty  shillings."  ^ 

Just  before  the  publication  of  the  essay,  Gibbon  entered  a 
hew,  and,  one  might  suppose,  a  very  uncongenial  scene  of 
life.  He  became  a  captain  in  the  Hampshire  militia ;  and 
for  moi-e  than  two  years  led  a  life  of  march  and  counter- 
march in  the  southern  counties  of  England.  Hampshire, 
Kent,  Wiltshire,  and  Devonshire,  formed  the  successive 
theatres  of  what  he  calls  his  "  bloodless  and  inglorious  cam- 
paigns." He  nevertheless,  justly  describes  it  as  a  life  of 
"  military  servitude,"  as  the  term  of  service  was  prolonged 

1  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  90. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  259 

far  beyond  the  period  he  had  contemplated,  and  the  mode 
of  Hfe  utterly  alien  from  all  his  pursuits  as  a  scholar  and  a 
student.  "  In  the  act,"  says  he,  "  of  offering  our  names  and 
receiving  our  commissions,  as  major  and  captain  in  the 
Hampshire  regiment  (June  12,  1759),  we  had  not  supposed 
that  we  should  be  dragged  away,  my  father  from  his 
farm,  myself  from  my  books,  and  condemned  during  two 
years  and  a  half  (May  10,  1760,  to  December  23,  1762), 
to  a  wandering  life  of  military  servitude."  ^  He  has  left  us 
an  amusing  account  of  the  busy  idleness  in  which  his  time 
was  spent ;  but,  considering  the  circumstances,  so  adverse  to 
study,  one  is  rather  surprised  that  our  military  student 
should  have  done  so  much,  than  that  he  did  so  little  ;  ^  and 
never  probably  before  were  so  many  hours  of  literary  study 
spent  in  a  tent.  In  estimating  the  comparative  advantages 
and  disadvantages  of  this  wearisome  period  of  his  life,  he 
has  summed  up  with  the  sagacity  of  a  man  of  the  world,  and 
the  impartiality  of  a  philosopher.  Irksome  as  were  his  em- 
ployments, grievous  as  was  the  waste  of  time,  uncongenial 
as  were  his  companions,  solid  benefits  were  to  be  set  off 
against  these  tilings ;  his  health  became  robust,  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  world  was  enlarged,  he  wore  off  some  of  his 
foreign  idiom,  got  rid  of  much  of  his  reserve  ;  he  adds,  — 
and  perhaps  in  his  estimate  it  was  the  benefit  to  be  most 
prized  of  all,  —  "  the  discipline  and  evolutions  of  a  modern 
battalion  gave  me  a  clearer  notion  of  the  phalanx  and  the 
legion,  and  the  captain  of  the  Hampshire  grenadiers  (the 

^  Memoirs,  Vol.  I.  p.  95. 

2  The  notes  of  his  Journal  at  this  period  are  worth  reading,  as 
curiously  illustrative  of  his  indomitable  literary  industry.  "  My 
example,"  he  says,  "  might  prove  that  in  the  life  most  averse  to  study 
some  hours  may  be  stolen,  some  minutes  may  be  snatched.  Amidst 
the  tumult  of  Winchester  camp  I  sometimes  thought  and  read  in  my 
tent;  in  the  more  settled  quarters  of  the  Devizes,  Blandford,  and 
Southampton,  I  always  secured  a  separate  lodging,  and  the  necessary 
books."  — Zi.  p.  104. 


260  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

reader  may  smile)  has  not  been  useless  to  the  historian  of 
the  Roman  Empire."  In  1762,  while  the  new  militia  was 
forming,  he  "  enjoyed  two  or  three  months  of  literary  re- 
pose," and  flew  to  his  books  with  an  appetite  sharpened  by 
his  long  fast.  In  pursuing  a  plan  of  study  at  this  period, 
he  hesitated  between  the  prosecution  of  mathematics  and 
Greek  ;  it  was  but  for  a  moment.  As  might  be  anticipated, 
Homer  carrted  the  day  against  Newton  and  Leibnitz. 

Nothing  can  _  better  illustrate  the  intensity  of  Gibbon's 
literary  ambition  —  his  only  strong  passion  —  than  the  num- 
ber of  literary  projects  with  which  his  mind  was  teeming 
even  in  camp.  He  enumerates  amongst  others  a  history  of 
the  expedition  of  Charles  VIII.  of  France ;  the  crusade  of 
Richard  the  Lion-hearted ;  the  wars  of  the  barons ;  and 
lives  of  the  Black  Prince,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  and  Montrose.  These  are  only  a  portion  of  the 
subjects  he  revolved  with  the  same  view.  They  show  by 
their  number  how  strong  was  the  impulse  to  literature,  and 
by  their  character,  how  determined  the  bent  of  his  mind  in 
the  direction  of  history. 

The  militia  was  disbanded  in  1763,  and  he  joyfully  shook 
off  his  bonds ;  but  his  literary  projects  were  still  to  be  post- 
poned. Following  his  own  wishes,  though  with  his  father's 
consent,  he  had  projected  a  continental  tour  as  the  comple- 
tion "of  an  English  gentleman's  education."  This  had 
been  interrupted  by  the  episode  of  the  militia.  He  now 
resumed  his  purpose  and  left  England  in  1763.  Two  years 
were  "  loosely  defined  as  the  term  of  his  absence,"  which  he 
exceeded  by  half  a  year  —  returning  June,  1765.  He  first 
visited  Paris,  where  he  saw  a  good  deal  of  D'Alembert, 
Diderot,  Barthelemy,  Raynal,  Helvetius,  Baron  d'Holbach, 
and  others  of  the  same  set ;  and  was  often  a  welcome  guest 
in  the  saloons  of  Mesdames  Geoffrin  and  Du  Deffand.'^  Vol- 

^  This  l*dy,  though  blind  — "  I'aveugle  clairvoyante,"  as  Voltaire 
happily  calls  her — recognized  with  exquisite  tact  the  self-betraying 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  261 

taire  was  at  Geneva,  Rousseau  at  Montmorency,  and  Buffon 
he  neglected  to  visit ;  but  the  above  names  are  enough  to 
justify  the  suspicion  that  the  hostility  which  he  afterwards 
evinced  towards  Christianity  may  in  part  be  attributed  to 
the  influence  of  such  si>ciety.  How  well  he  liked  Paris  is 
evident  from  his  own  statements :  "  Fourteen  weeks  insen- 
sibly stole  away ;  but  had  I  been  rich  and  independent,  I 
should  have  prolonged  and  perhaps  have  fixed  my  residence 
at  Paris."  * 

From  France  he  proceeded  to  Switzerland,  'and  revisited 
his  friends  at  Lausanne ;  thence  to  Italy  in  1764.  The  ac- 
count of  his  feelings  on  approaching  Rome  —  how  like  in 
intensity  to  those  of  Luther  on  a  similar  occasion,  and  yet 
of  how  different  a  character !  —  is  deeply  interesting.  His 
emotions,  he  says,  were  not  "enthusiastic,"  and  yet  became, 
as  he  confesses,  almost  "  uncontrollable."  While  here,  his 
long  yearning  for  some  great  theme  worthy  of  bis  historic 
genius  was  gratified.  The  first  conception  of  the  Decline 
and  Fall  arose  as  he  lingered  one  Evening  amidst  the  ves- 
tiges of  ancient  glory ;  but  his  precise  words  cannot  be 
omitted  in  any  sketch  of  Gibbon,  however  brief:  —  "  It  was 
at  Rome,"  says  he,  "on  the  loth  of  October,  1764,  as  I  sat 
musing  amidst  the  ruins  of  the  capitol,  while  the  barefooted 
friars  were  singing  vespers  in  the  temple  of  Jupiter,  that 
the  idea  of  writing  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  city  first 
started  to  my  mind."  M.  Suard  fancifully  attributes  to  the 
combination  of  circumstances  under  which  the  conception  of 
the  work  arose,  some  of  that  inveterate  hatred  of  Chris- 
solicitude  of  Gibbon  to  catch  the  exact  tone  of  French  manners  and 
society.  She  thus  speaks  in  a  letter  to  Walpole  :  "  He  sets  too  much 
value  on  our  talents  for  society  (nos  agr^ments),  shows  too  much  desire 
of  acquiring  them  ;  it  is  constantly  on  the  tip  of  my  tongue  to  say  to 
him,  *  Do  not  put  yourself  to  so  much  trouble ;  you  deserve  the  honor 
of  being  a  Frenchman.'  " 

^Memoirs,  p.  117 


262  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

tianity  which  pervades  it.  "  Struck  with  a  first  impi-ession," 
he  says,  "  Gibbon,  in  writing  the  Decline  and  Fall  of  the 
Empire,  saw  in  Christianity  only  an  institution  which  had 
placed  vespers,  barefooted  friars,  and  processions,  in  the 
room  of  the  magnificent  ceremoni«<s  of  Jupiter,  and  the  tri- 
umphs of  the  Capitol." 

Others  attributed  it  in  part  to  the  conservative  quality  of 
his  politics,  which  led  him  to  regard  Christianity  as  a  "  dar- 
ing innovation."  It  seems  probable  that  his  tendencies  and 
habits  of  mind,  which  were  eminently  favorable  to  skepti- 
cism, and  the  society  in  which  he  had  early  moved  (and 
especially  of  late  in  the  saloons  of  Paris),  had  much  more 
to  do  with  the  result  than  either  of  these  causes. 

About  five  years  after  his  return  home  his  father  died 
(1770).  This  is  the  period  of  his  life  which  he  says  he 
passed -with  the  least  enjoyment,  and  remembered  with  the 
least  satisfaction.  He  attended  "  every  spring  the  meetings 
of  the  militia  at  Southampton,  —  and  rose  successively  to 
the  rank  of  major  and  lieutenant-colonel ; "  but  was  each 
year  "  more  disgusted  with  the  inn,  the  wine,  the  company, 
and  the  tiresome  repetition  of  annual  attendance  and  daily 
exercise."  From  his  own  account,  however,  it  appears  that  ■ 
other  and  deeper  causes  produced  his  ennui.  Sincerely  at- 
tached to  his  home,  he  yet  felt  the  anomaly  of  his  position. 
At  thirty,  still  a  dependant,  without  a  settled  occupation, 
without  a  definite  social  status,  he  often  regretted  that  he 
had  not  embraced  some  profession  :  "  From  the  emoluments 
of  a  profession,"  he  says,  "  I  might  have  derived  an  ample 
fortune,  or  a  competent  income,  instead  of  being  stinted  to 
the  same  narrow  allowance,  to  be  increased  only  by  an  event 
which  I  sincerely  deprecate."  ^  Doubtless  the  secret  fire  of 
a  consuming,  but  as  yet  ungratified,  literary  ambition  also 
troubled  his  repose. 

^  Metnoirs,  p.  132. 


EDWAKD    GIBBON.  263 

He  still  "  contemplated  at  awful  distance "  The  Decline 
and  Fall ;  and,  meantime,  revolved  other  subjects.  Hesi- 
tating between  the  revolutions  of  Florence  and  Switzerland, 
he  consulted  M.  Deyvcrdun,  a  young  Swiss  with  whom  he 
had  been  intimate  during  his  first  residence  at  Lausanne, 
and  decided  in  favor  of  the  land  which  was  his  "  friend's  by 
birth  "  and  "  his  own  by  adoption."  He  executed  the  first 
book  in  French ;  it  was  read  as  an  anonjraous  production 
before  a  literary  society  of  foreigners  in  London,  and  con- 
demned. Gibbon  sat  and  listened  to  their  strictures.  It 
never  got  beyond  that  rehearsal ;  and  though  Hume  encour- 
aged him  to  proceed,  Gibbon  declared  the  sentence  just,  and 
declined. 

In  1767,  he  joined  with  M.  Deyverdun  in  starting  the 
Memoirs  lAtteraires  de  la  Grande  Bretagne.  But  its  cir- 
culation was  limited,  and.  only  two  volumes  had  appeared 
when  Deyverdun  went  abroad.  The  materials  already  col- 
lected for  a  third  volume  were  suppressed.  It  may  be  inter- 
esting to  the  reader  to  knowHhat  in  the  first  volume  is  a 
review  by  Gibbon  of  Lord  Lyttleton's  History  of  Henry  II. 

The  next  appearance  of  the  historian  made  a  deeper  im- 
pression. It  was  the  first  distinct  print  of  the  lion's  foot. 
"  Ex  ungue  leonem "  might  have  been  justly  said,  for  he 
attacked,  and  attacked  successfully,  the  redoubtable  War- 
burton.  Of  the  many  paradoxes  in  the  Divine  Legation, 
none  is  more  extravagant  than  the  theory  that  Virgil  in  the 
sixth  book  of  his  -^neid  intended  to  allegorize,  in  the  visit 
of  his  hero  and  the  sybil  to  th§  shades,  the  initiation  of 
^neas,  as  a  lawgiver,  into  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.  This 
theory  Gibbon  completely  exploded  in  his  Critical  Observa- 
tions (1770)  ;  no  very  difficy^t  task,  indeed,  but  achieved  in 
a  style,  and  with  a  profusion  of  learning,  which  showed  that 
its  author  was  capable  of  far  greater  things.  Warburton 
never  replied,  and  few  will  believe  that  he  would  not,  if  he 
had  not  thought  silence  more  discreet.     Gibbon,  however. 


264  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

regrets  that  the  style  of  his  pamphlet  was  too  acrimonious ; 
and  this  regret,  considering  his  antagonist's  slight  claims  to 
forbearance,  is  creditable  to  him.  "  I  cannot  forgive  myself 
the  contemptuous  treatment  of  a  man  who,  with  all  his 
faults,  was  entitled  to  my  esteem."  ^ 

At  length,  after  fifteen  years  from  the  date  of  his  maiden 
JEssai,  and  five  from  his  father's  death  —  an  event  which 
left  him  the  free  use  of  his  time  —  appeared  the  ^rst  vol- 
ume of  the  history  which  has  immortalized  his  name.  His 
preparations  for  this  great  work  were  vast.  The  classics, 
"  as  low  as  Tacitus,  Pliny  the  Younger,  and  Juvenal,"  had 
been  long  familiar.  He  now  "  plunged  into  the  ocean  of  the 
Augustan  history,"  and  "  with  pen  almost  always  in  hand," 
pored  over  all  the  remains,  Greek  and  Latin,  between  Tra- 
jan and  the  last  of  the  western  Csesars.  "  The  subsidiary 
rays  of  medals  and  inscriptions,  of  geography  and  chronol- 
ogy, were  thrown  on  their  proper  objects;  and  I  apphed  the 
collections  of  Tillemont,  whose  inimitable  accuracy  almost 
assumes  the  character  of  genius,  to  fix  and  ax-range  within 
my  reach  the  loose  and  scattered  atoms  of  historical  informa- 
tion."^ The  Theodosian  Code,  with  Godefroy's  Commen- 
tary ;  the  Christian  Apologists,  with  the  testimonies  of 
Lardner ;  The  Annals  and  Antiquities  of  Muratori ;  col- 
lated with  "  the  parallel  or  transverse  lines "  of  Sigonius 
and  Maffei,  Pagi  and  Baronius,  were  all  critically  studied. 
Such  was  a  portion  of  the  formidable  apparatus  employed 
by  this  great  historical  genius.  His  maxim  as  a  student 
had  always  been  multum  .legere  potius  quam  multa.  The 
reader  will  probably  think,  even  from  this  imperfect  enu- 
meration of  his  studies,  that  he  read  both  multum  and 
multa ;  but  the  general  accuracy  of  his  investigations  was 
commensurate  with  their  variety.  It  appears  from  his  own 
confession  that  he  long  brooded  over  the  chaos  of  materials 

1  Memoirs,  p.  139.  '^  lb.  p.  140. 


ED  WARD    GlBBON»  265 

before  light  dawned  upon  it.  At  the  commencement,  he 
says,  "  all  was  dark  and  doubtful ; "  the  limits,  divisions, 
even  the  title  of  his  work  were  undetermined  ;  the  first 
chapter  was  composed  three  times,  and  the  second  and  third 
twice,  before  he  was  satisfied  with  his  efforts.  But  this  pro- 
longed meditation  .on  his  design  and  its  execution  was  well 
repaid  by  the  result ;  so  methodical  did  his  ideas  become, 
and  so  readily  did  his  materials  shape  themselves,  that  (with 
the  above  exceptions)  the  original  MS.  of  the  entire  six 
quartos  were  sent  uncopied  to  the  printer.  He  also  says 
that  not  a  sheet  had  been  seen  by  any  other  eyes  than  those 
of  author  and  printer.  This  last  statement  must  be  taken 
with  a  small  deduction  ;  or  rather  we  must  suppose  that  a 
few  chapters  had  been  submitted,  if  not  to  the  "  eyes,"  to 
the  "  ears  "  of  others ;  for  he  elsewhere  tells  us  that  he  was 
"soon  disgusted  with  the  modest  practice  of  reading  the 
manuscript  to  his  friends." 

Such,  however,  were  his  preliminary  diflSculties,  that  he 
confesses  he  was  often  "  tempted  to  cast  away  the  labor  of 
seven  years."  He  persevered,  and  in  February,  1776,  the 
first  volume  was  published.  The  success  was  instant,  and, 
for  a  quarto,  probably  unprecedented.  The  entire  impres- 
sion was  exhausted  in  a  few  days*  The  author  might 
almost  have  said,  as  Lord  Byron  after  the  publication  of 
Childe  Harold,  that  "  he  awoke  one  morning  and  found  him- 
self famous."  In  addition  to  public  applause,  he  was  grati- 
fied by  the  more  select  praises  of  Robertson  and  Hume,  and 
declares  that  the  complimentary  letter  of  the  last  "  overpaid 
the  labors  of  ten  years."  Hume  applauds,  as  may  be  sup- 
posed, the  "  prudent  temperament "  of  the  historisfli  in  the 
treatment  of  the  delicate  subjects  of  the  "  celebrated  chap- 
ters." ^  Nevertheless,  he  predicted  "  clamor ; "  and  formed  a 
much  more  correct  notion  of  the  effects  on  the  public  mind 
than  Gibbon  had  done.  He  admits  the  nation's  reverence 
for  Christianity,  though  he  calls  it  "  superstition ; "  Gibbon 

23 


266  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

believed,  or  aifected  to  believe,  that  England  sympathized 
with  the  indifFerentism  of  France. 

Two  years  before  the  publication  of  this  first  volume  (1774) 
Gibbon  was  elected  member  of  parliament  for  Liskeard. 
His  political  duties  did  not  suspend  his  prosecution  of  his 
history,  except  on  one  occasion,  and  for.  a  little  while.  In 
the  year  1779  he  undertook  a  task  on  behalf  of  the  minis- 
try, which,  if  well  performed,  was,  it  must  be  confessed,  well 
rewarded.  The  French  government  had  issued  a  manifesto 
preparatory  to  a  declaration  of  war,  and  Gibbon  was  solic- 
ited by  Chancellor  Thurlow,  and  Lord  "Weymouth,  Secretary 
of  State,  to  answer  it.  This  produced  his  able  Memoire 
Justificatif,  composed  in  French,  and  delivered  to  the  courts 
of  Europe.  He  was  rewarded  with  a  seat  at  the  Board  of 
Trade  and  Plantations,  —  little  more  than  a  sinecure  in 
itself,  but  with  a  very  substantial  salary  of  nearly  £800  per 
annum.  His  acceptance  displeased  his  political  associates, 
and  he  was  accused  of  "  deserting  a  party  in  which,"  he 
declares,  "  he  had  never  enlisted."  A  note  of  Fox,  how- 
ever, on  the  margin  of  a  copy  of  Gibbon's  history,  records 
a  very  distinct  remembrance  of  the  historian's  previous  vitu- 
peration of  the  ministry ;  and  this  could  not  but  make  his 
political  services  look  venal.  He  is  said  to  have  said  that 
"  there  would  be  no  hope  for  England  except  by  taking  off 
the  heads  of  six  of  the  cabinet,  and  exposing  them  as  an 
example  in  parliament."  Yet  in  a  fortnight  he  accepted 
place.  Lord  Sheffield  says  his  friend  never  intended  the 
words  to  be  taken  literally  t  No  doubt,  but  it  sufficiently 
shows  what  he  thought  of  the  deserts  of  fhe  ministry  he  yet 
consented  to  serve.  But  who  can  read  the  life  and  works 
of  Gibbon  and  imagine  him  a  martyr,  whether  for  love, 
politics,  or  religion  ? 

At  the  general  election  in  1780,  he  lost  his  seat  for  Lis- 
keard, but  was  subsequently  elected  for  Lymington.  The 
ministry  of  Lord  North,  however,  was  tottering,  and  soon 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  267 

after  fell ;  the  Board  of  Trade  was  abolished,  and  Gibbon's 
salary  vanished  with  it;  —  no  trifle,  for  his  expenditure  had 
been  for  three  years  on  a  scale  somewhat  disproportionate 
to  his  private  fortune.  He  did  not  like  to  depend  on  states- 
men's promises,  which  are  proverbially  uncertain  of  fulfil- 
ment; he  as  little  liked  to  retrench  ;  and  he  was  wearied  of 
parliament,  where  he  had  never  given  any  but  silent  votes. 
Urged  by  such  considerations,  he  once  more  turned  his  eyes 
jto  the  scene  of  his  early  exile,  where  he  might  live  on  his 
decent  patrimony  in  a  style  which  was  impossible  in  Eng- 
land, and  pursue  unembarrassed  his  literary  studies.  He 
therefore  resolved  to  fix  himself  at  Lausanne. 

A  word  only  is  necessary  on  his  parhamentary  career. 
Neither  nature  nor  acquired  habits  qualified  him  to  be  an 
orator ;  his  late  entrance  on  public  life,  his  natural  timidity, 
his  feeble  voice,  his  limited  command  of  idiomatic  English, 
and  even,  as  he  candidly  confesses,  his  literary  fame,  were 
all  obstacles  to  success.  "After  a  fleeting,  illusive  hope, 
prudence  condemned  me  to  acquiesce  in  the  humble  station 
of  a  mute.  ...  I  was  not  armed  by  nature  and  education 
with  the  intrepid  energy  of  mind  and  voice  —  '  Vincentem 
strepitus  et  natum  rebus  agendis.'  Timidity  was  justified  by 
pride,  and  even  the  success  of  my  pen  discouraged  the  trial 
of  my  voice."  His  repugnance  to  public  life  is  strongly 
expressed  in  a  letter  to  his  father  of  a  very  early  date.  He 
prays  that  the  money  which  a  seat  in  parliament  would  cost 
may  be  expended  in  a  mode  more  agreeable  to  him.  Gib- 
bon was  eight-and-thirty  when  he  entered  parliament ;  and 
the  obstacles  wnRi  even  at  an  earlier  period  he  would  have 
had  to  encounter  were  hardly  likely  to  be  vanquished  then. 

Nor  had  he  much  political  sagacity.  He  was  better 
skilled  in  investigating  the  past  than,  in  divining  the  ftture. 
While  Burke  and  Fox,  and  so  many  great  statesmen,  pro- 
claimed the  consequence  of  the  collision  with  America,  Gib- 
bon saw  nothing  but  colonies  in   rebellion,  and  a  paternal 


268  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

government  justly  incensed.  His  silent  votes  were  all  given 
on  that  hypothesis.  In  a  similar  manner,  while  he  abhorred 
the  French  revolution,  he  seemed  to  have  had  no  apprehen- 
sion, like  Chesterfield,  Burke,  or  even  Horace  Walpole,  of  its 
approach,  or  that  it  had  any  thing  to  do  with  the  philosophic 
coteries  in  which  he  had  taken  such  delight. 

In  1781,  he  published  two  more  quartos  of  his  history. 
They  excited  less  controversy,  and  were  therefore  less 
talked  about.  This  seems  to  have  extorted  from  him  a  half 
murmur  about  "  prejudice  and  neglect."  The  fact  is,  there 
was  less  room  for  discussion  and  complaint;  the  volumes, 
however,  were  read  with  silent  avidity,  and  deserved  it. 
Though  less  exciting  than  the  first,  they  were  written  with  a 
deeper  judgment,  and  were  more  free  from  the  taint  of  in- 
fidelity. 

Having  sold  all  his  property  except  his  library  —  to  him 
equally  a  necessary  and  a  luxury  —  Gibbon  repaired  to 
Lausanne  in  September,  1783,  and  took  up  his  abode  with 
his  early  friend  Deyverdun,  now  a  resident  there.  Per- 
fectly fi'ee  from  every  engagement  but  those  which  his  own 
tastes  imposed,  easy  in  his  circumstances,  commanding  just 
as  much  society,  and  that  as  select  as  he  pleased,  with  the 
noblest  scenery  spread  out  ^t  his  feet,  no  situation  can  be 
imagined  more  favorable  for  the  prosecution  of  his  literary 
enterprise  ;  —  a  hermit  in  his  study  as  long  as  he  chose,  and 
the  most  delightful  recreation  always  ready  for  him  at  the 
threshold.  "  In  London,"  says  he,  "  I  was  lost  in  the  crowd  ; 
I  ranked  with  the  first  families  in  Lausanne,  and  my  style 
of  prudent  expense  enabled  me  to  maimain  a  fair  bahince 
of  reciprocal  civilities.  .  .  .  Instead  of  a  small  house  be- 
tween a  street  and  a  stable-yard,  I  began  to  occupy  a  spa- 
cious and  convenient  mansion,  connected  on  the  north  side 
with  the  city,  and  open  on  the  south  to  a  beautiful  and 
boundless  horizon.  A  garden  of  four  acres  had  been  laid 
out  by  the  taste  of  M.  Deyverdun ;  from  the  garden  a  rich 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  269 

scenery  of  meadows  and  vineyards  descends  to  the  Leman 
Lake,  and  the  prospect  far  beyond  the  lake  is  crowned  by 
the  stupendous  mountains  of  Savoy."*  In  this  enviable  re- 
treat, it  is  no  wonder  that  a  year  should  have  been  suffered 
to  roll  round  before  he  vigorously  resumed  his  great  work, — 
and  with  many  men  it  would  never  have  been  resumed  in 
such  a  paradise.  We  may  remark  en  passant  that  the 
retreat  was  often  enlivened,  or  invaded,  by  friendly  tourists 
from  England,  whose  "  frequent  incursions  "  into  Switzerland 
our  recluse  seems  half  to  lament  as  an  evil.  What  would 
he  have  said  fifty  years  later  ?  Among  others,  Mr.  Fox 
gave  him  two  "  welcome  days  of  free  and  private  society  " 
in  1788.  Differing  as  they  did  in  politics,  Gibbon's  testi- 
mony to  the  genius  and  character  of  the  great  statesman  is 
highly  honorable  to  both.  "  Perhaps  no  human  being,"  he 
says,  "  was  ever  more  perfectly  exempt  from  the  taint  of 
malevolence,  vanity,  or  falsehood." 

When  once  fairly  reseated  at  his  task  he  proceeded  in 
this  delightful  retreat  leisurely,  yet  rapidly,  to  its  comple- 
tion. The  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  volumes  were  all  in  man- 
uscript before  he  thought  of  printing.  On  the  27th  of  June, 
1787,  he  was  "  free,"  if  freedom  can  be  predicated  of  that 
condition,  so  profoundly  natural,  which  Gibbon  has  as  natu- 
rally delineated.  *•  I  have  presumed,"  says  he,  "  to  mark 
the  moment  of  conception  ;  I  shall  now  commemorate  the 
hour  of  my  final  deliverance.  It  was  on  the  day,  or  rather 
night,  of  the  27th  of  June,  1787,  between  the  hours  of  eleven 
and  twelve,  that  I  wrote  the  last  lines  of  the  last  page  in  a 
summer-house  in  my  garden.  After  la}4ng  down  my  pen, 
I  took  several  turns  in  a  berceau  or  covered  walk  of  acacias, 
which  commands  a  prospect  of  the  country,  the  lake,  and 
the  mountains.  The  air  was  temperate,  the  sky  was  serene, 
the  silver  orb  of  the  moon  was  reflected  from  the  waters, 

^  Memoirs,  p.  166. 

23* 


270  '     NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  all  nature  was  silent.  I  will  not  dissemble  the  first 
emotions  of  joy  on  the  recovery  of  my  freedom,  and,  per- 
haps, the  establishment  of  my  fame.  But  my  pride  was 
soon  humbled,  and  a  sober  melancholy  was  spread  over  my 
mind  by  the  idea  that  I  had  taken  an  everlasting  leave  of 
an  old  and  agreeable  companion  ;  and  that  whatsoever  might 
be  the  future  date  of  my  history,  the  hfe  of  the  historian 
must  be  short  and  precarious."  ^  Sad  that  the^'Consolations 
of  Philosophy  should  have  offered  nothing  better  than  this  ! 

Taking  the  manuscript  of  the  last  three  volumes  with  him. 
Gibbon,  after  an  absence  of  four  years,  once  more  visited 
London.  The  arrangements  for  publishing  volumes  so 
heralded  by  their  predecessors,  were  soon  effected,  and 
the  printing  proceeded  apace ;  but  after  it  was  completed, 
a  little  trait  of  characteristic  egotism  for  a  while  delayed  the 
publication.  The  great  event  was  to  synchronize  with 
the  author's  fifty-first  birthday,  and  the  two  great  events 
were  celebrated  by  ]VIr.  Cadell,  the  publisher,  by  a  third 
great  event,  —  no  less  than  a  literary  dinner  in  the  author's 
honor ;  —  where,  says  Gibbon,  '•  I  seemed  to  blush  while 
they  read  an  elegant  compliment  from  Mr.  Hayley."  As- 
suredly it  ought  to  have  been  no  seeming  blush  with  which 
the  historian  listened  to  the  fulsome  hyperboles  of  the  verses 
with  which  this  mediocre  Pindar  regaled  him ;  and  if  he 
did  not  blush  for  himself,  he  ought  to  have  done  so  for 
the  Muse. 

The  last  volumes  of  the  work  were  eagerly  read,  but  much 
criticized ;  and  while  the  same  religious  objections  were 
taken,  and  justly,  the  author  was  found  more  fault  with  for 
the  indecency  of  his  notes.  Gibbon  professes  that  he  never 
could  understand  this  charge ;  and  it  is  very  likely  (though 
very  lamentable)  that  he  spoke  the  simple  truth.  In  his 
defence  he  says  he  had  wrapped  up  the  offensive  matter  in 

1  Memoirs,  p.  170. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  271 

the  learned  languages  ;  but  tlien,  to  how  many  thousands  of 
those  who  read  his  book  were  those  languages  familiar! 
The  question  is  as  to  the  necessity  of  such  citations  and  com- 
ments as  those  in  which  he  has  indulged,  and  few  will  con- 
tend for  it,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  to  any  legitimate  pur- 
pose of  history.  He  also  says  that  he  had  been  equally  free, 
though  less  censured,  in  the  earlier  volumes.  This  would 
be  nothing  to  the  purpose  even  if  true ;  but  it  is  hardly 
true  ;  for  it  would  be  easy  to  point  out  in  the  later  volumes 
more  than  one  instance  in  which  Gibbon  has  gone  completely 
out  of  his  way  to  introduce  impurities  which  none  but  a 
mind  too  accustomed  to  revolve  such  ideas  would  wish  to 
suggest  to  the  minds  of  others ;  and  one  instance,  at  least,  in 
which  he  has  chosen  to  improvise  a  ludicrous  varia  lectio  of 
a  passage  for  the  very  purpose  of  conveying  a  most  gross 
obscenity.  As  a  writer  in  the  Quarterly  Review  has  very 
justly  remarked,  "  the  critical  scrupulosity  with  which  he 
investigates  the  most  nauseous  details,  sifting  them  with  the 
pertinacity  and  relish  of  a  duck  filtering  the  filthiest  mud 
for  its  meal,"  "  his  sly  innuendoes,  his  luxurious  amplifica- 
'tions,"  disclose  a  gross  and  prurient  mind.  Many  other  men 
equally  skeptical,  would  have  shrunk  from  this  kind  of  pollu- 
tion ;  he  plunges  into  the  filth  with  all  the  gout  and  relish 
of  a  congenial  sensuality. 

He  returned  to  Switzerland  in  July,  1788  ;  but  the  death 
of  his  friend  Deyverdun,  and  the  ennui  resulting  from  the 
loss  of  his  great  occupation,  which  had  been  as  a  daily  com- 
panion for  so  many  years,  had  divested  his  retreat  of  its 
chief  charms ;  while  the  premonitory  mutterings  of  the 
great  thunderstorm  of  the  French  Revolution,  which  rever- 
berated in  hollow  echoes  even  through  the  quiet  valleys  of 
Switzerland,  further  troubled  his  repose.  At  length  public 
events,  seconded  by  motives  of  friendship,  drove  the  historian 
to  his  island  home.  He  arrived  in  England  in  1793.  He 
appears  to  have  amused  himself  during  the  latter  part  of 


272  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

his  stay  at  Lausanne  with  his  Memoirs,  which,  with  his  cor- 
respondence and  miscellaneous  pieces,  it  was  reserved  for 
his  friend  Lord  Sheffield  to  give  to  the  public. 

His  life  was  now  drawing  to  a  close,  fie  had  fondly  an- 
ticipated, from  the  "  laws  of  probability  so  true  in  general," 
but,  alas !  "  so  fallacious  in  particular,"  fifteen  years  of 
life.  They  proved  in  his  case  to  be  "  fallacious  in  particu- 
lar," for  he  survived  scarcely  a  fourth  of  the  hoped  for 
period.  He  died  January  16,  1794,  about  nine  months 
after  his  return  to  England.  Singularly  enough,  he  had 
been  for  years  afflicted  by  the  disease  which  at  last 
proved  fatal,  but  had  been  insensible  to  its  importance,  and 
had  declined,  from  false  delicacy,  to  seek  medical  aid.  It 
was  an  element  of  the  "  probabilities,"  which  he  had  not 
calculated. 

Just  before  his  death  he  was  in  full  possession  of  his 
senses,  and  is  said  to  have  died  with  much  composure  ;  but 
he  was  evidently  unconscious  of  the  stealthy  step  of  the  De- 
stroyer till  the  curtain  was  suddenly  drawn,  and  the  blow 
struck. 

The  character  of  Gibbon  presents  much  that  is  personally 
and  socially  estimable.  Of  a  frigid  temperament,  he  had 
not  in  his  composition  one  particle  of  the  qualities  which 
constitute  moi*al  greatness  in  any  one  of  its  many  forms  ; 
but  it  would  be  unjust  to  deny  that  he  was  amiable  and 
good-tempered,  and  capable  of  feeling  and  inspiring  a  firm, 
though  not  very  enthusiastic  friendship.  It  must  be  added 
that  his  friendships  were  such  as  did  not  involve  any  severe 
strain  upon  patience,  self-denial,  generosity,  or  on  his 
characteristic  equanimity.  That  equanimity,  it  must  be  al- 
lowed, was  very  little  tried  in  any  way ;  he  practised  his 
philosophy  cheaply.  Born  to  competency,  and  at  length 
possessed  of  fortune  —  always  fully  sensible  of  the  advan- 
tages which  fortune  brings  in  her  train  —  provided  with 
pleasures  and  occupations  he  intensely  loved  —  successful  in 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  273 

the  great  object  of  his  literary  ambition,  which  was  his  only 
strong  passion,  and  the  gratification  of  which,  as  his  Memoirs 
show,  afforded  him  intense  delight  —  he  seems,  if  we  but 
suppose  this  world  to  be  aU,  to  have  whiled  away  his  time 
here  as  pleasantly  as  any  wise  epicurean  could,  and  to  have 
computed  the  sum  of  his  enjoyments  at  the  close  with  a  suf- 
ficiently complacent,  but  not  erroneous  arithmetic.^  "  M. 
d'Alembert  relates,"  says  he,  "  that  as  he  was  walking  in 
the  gardens  of  Sans  Souci  with  the  king  of  Prussia,  Fred- 
erick said  to  him,  '  Do  you  see  that  old  woman,  a  poor 
weeder,  asleep  on  that  sunny  bank  ?  She  is  probably  a 
more  happy  being  than  either  of  us.'  The  king  and  the 
philosopher  may  speak  for  themselves ;  for  my  part  I  do 
not  envy  the  old  woman."  ^ 

But  with  good-nature  and  social  amenity  the  praise  of  his 
personal  character  almost  ends.  No  traits,  so  far  as  we  can 
find,  of  self-denial,  generosity,  magnanimity,  nobility  of  mind, 
mark  his  history.  M.  Vaillant  even  charges  him  with  "  in- 
sensibility to  all  lofty  and  generous  sentiments."  This  is 
too  strong ;  at  least  if  the  expression  of  "  lofty  "  sentiments 
(a  cheap  way,  it  must  be  admitted,  of  manifesting  the  more 
arduous  virtues),  may  be  taken  as  a  key  to  character  where 
we  cannot  appeal  to  the  bettei^est  of  action.  Of  such  sen- 
timents of  sympathy  with  magnanimous  virtue,  there  is  no 
lack  in  his  Decline  and  Fall,  —  if  we  except  two  subjects. 
"  His  reflections,"  says  Porson,  "  are  just  and  profound  ;  he 
pleads  eloquently  for  the  rights  of  mankind  and  the  duty  of 
toleration,  nor  does  his  humanity  ever  slumber  —  unless 
when  women  are  ravished,  and  Christians  persecuted." 
The  exceptions,  it  must  be  confessed,  cut  deep,  and  remind 
us  a  little  of  the  indignant  virtue  of  the  Irish  woman,  who 
challenged  her  accusers  to  say,  barring  theft,  lust,  and 
drunkenness,  what  they  could  have  to  allege  against  her. 

1  Memoirs,  pp.  182-184.  ^  7J.^  p.  i83. 


274  NEW    BIOGUAPHIES. 

Vanity  he  had  in  abundance,  as  appears  in  his  Memoirs , 
indeed,  without  it  would  any  man  ever  write  his  autobiogra- 
phy ?  Yet  it  is  accompanied  in  Gibbon  with  much  candor. 
Less  indulgence  can  be  given  to  the  contemptuous  arrogance 
with  which  he  treats  opponents. 

His  conversation,  though,  as  might  be  expected,  full  of 
information,  seems  to  have  been,  if  not  tinged  with  pedant- 
ry, yet  too  formal.  He  talked  much  as  he  wrote,  and  this 
prevented  his  attaining  the  ease  and  grace  of  the  best  col- 
loquial style.  "  His  conversation,"  says  M.  Suard,  "  never 
carried  one  away.  Its  fault  was  an  artificiality  which  never 
permitted  him  to  say  any  thing  unless  well,"  —  that  is,  well 
in  his  estimate  ;  and  so,  in  books,  and  notes,  and  conversa- 
tion his  diction  was  apt  to  be  recherche,  and  his  sentences  a 
mosaic. 

Gibbon's  genius  was  singularly  adapted  to  the  task  he 
undertook.  He  ironically  observes,  in  his  Memoirs,  that 
since  "  philosophy  has  exploded  all  innate  ideas  and  natural 
propensities,"  fortuitous  causes  in  early  life  must  be  alleged 
to  account  for  the  invincible  bent  of  his  mind  to  history. 
But  he  distinctly  intimates  his  convictions  to  the  con- 
trary in  another  part  of  his  Memoirs :  "  After  his  oracle 
Dr.  Johnson,  my  friend  Sif  Joshua  Reynolds  denies  all 
original  genius,  any  natural  propensity  of  the  mind  to  one 
art  or  science  rather  than  another.  Without  engaging  in  a 
metaphysical  or,  rather,  verbal  dispute,  I  know  by  experi- 
ence that  from  my  early  youth  I  aspired  to  the  character  of 
an  historian."  ^  •  No  just  philosophy  is  likely  to  explode 
"  innate "  aptitudes  of  fundamental  peculiarities  of  mind, 
whether  generic  or  individual ;  and  to  these,  at  least  as 
strongly  as  to  education  or  accident,  must  we  attribute  each 
special  bias  of  genius.  Not  that  these  last  have  little  to  do 
with  the  character  of  intellect,  which  is  finally  the  result  of 

^  Memoirs,  p.  106. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  275 

It- 
two  variables  —  certain  original  tendencies  of  mind,  and  the 

discipline  to  which  the  mind  has  been  subjected.  It  is  a 
departure  perhaps  from  ordinary  language  to  speak  of  some 
one  distinct  endowment  of  mind,  or  congeries  of  endow- 
ments, and  call  it  an  historic  genius,  in  the  same  way  we 
speak  of  a  philosophical  or  poetical  genius ;  but  if  the 
phrase  be  ever  allowable,  it  is  assuredly  so  in  the  case  of 
Gibbon.  It  mg.y  be  more  proper  to  say,  however,  that  he 
had  in  large  measure  all  those  separate  endowments,  which, 
in  conjunction,  best  fit  a  man  for  this  department  of  compo- 
sition ;  some  of  them  hardly  compatible  at  all,  and  scarcely 
ever  seen  united.  In  him  all  were  possessed  in  a  harmony 
and  perfection  seldom  equalled,  perhaps  never  surpassed  ;  a 
most  retentive  memory,  the  most  active  powers  of  acqui- 
sition, indomitable' industry,  a  mind  capable  equally  of 
ascending  to  the  most  comprehensive,  and  of  descending  to 
the  most  minute  surveys  ;  of  appreciating  the  beautiful  and 
sublime  in  classic  literature,  and  yet  of  delighting  in  the 
verbal  criticism,  tedious  collations,  and  dry  antiquarian  re- 
search by  which  the  text  is  established  or  illustrated ;  of 
celebrating  the  more  imposing  events  of  history  with  con- 
genial pomp  of  description,  and  of  investigating  with  the 
dullest  plodder's  patience  and  perseverance  the  origin  of 
nations,  the  emigrations  of  obscure  tribes,  and  the  repulsive 
yet  instructive  problems  which  ethnology  presents.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  widest  deductions  of  historic  philosophy  alter- 
nate in  his  pages  with  attempts  to  fix  the  true  reading  of  an 
obsciire  passage  or  a  minute  point  of  chronology  or  geogra- 
phy. It  may  even  be  said  that  in  these  last  investigations 
he  took  almost  as  much  delight  as  in  depicting  the  grander 
scenes  of  history,  and  surrendered  himself  as  absolutely  for 
the  time  to  the  migrations  of  the  Goths  and  Scythians  as  to 
the  campaigns  of  Belisarius  or  the  conquests  of  the  Sara- 
cens. It  must  be  added  that  never  has  any  historian 
evinced  greater  logical  sagacity  in  making  comparatively 


276  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

obscure  details  yield  impoftant  inferences,  or  held  with  a 
firmer  hand  the  balance  in  the  case  of  conflicting  probabili- 
ties ;  none  who  has  exhibited  sounder  judgment  or  self- 
control  (always  excepting  Christianity)  in  cases  where  it  is 
so  easy  for  learned  enthusiasm  to  run  into  fanciful  hypoth- 
eses. To  these  qualities  must  be  added  a  singular  skill  in 
marshalling  for  effect  the  diversified  and  multifarious  mat- 
ters of  his  history,  and  often  much  richness  of  iraaginatioR 
and  great  graphic  art  in  investing  their  more  picturesque 
features  with  the  brilliant  tints  and  colors,  the  due  light  and 
shade  which  belong  to  historic  painting. 

Of  the  many  high  qualities  which  characterize  his  history 
perhaps  none  is  more  marked  than  the  manner  in  which  he 
he  has  managed  to  manoeuvre,  so  to  speak,  the  vast  array 
of  facts  which  crowd  its  pages.  It  is  the  amplest  historic 
canvas  ever  spread,  the  largest  historic  painting  ever  exe- 
cuted by  a  single  hand.  The  history  of  Rome  is,  for  the 
many  centuries  which  Gibbon  treats,  the  history  of  the 
world ;  and  it  is  astonishing  that  he  should  have  been  able 
to  work  with  so  much  ease  such  vast  and  incongruous  ma- 
terials with  so  much  unity  of  design ;  that  he  should  have 
been  able  (so  to  speak)  to  exhibit  the  many-colored  nations 
of  all  varieties  of  costume,  habits,  languages,  and  religions 
in  one  tolerably  consistent  tableau.  The  history  is  a  sort 
of  moving  panorama  of  the  nations ;  and  as  tribe  after 
tribe,  nation  after  nation,  Celt,  Goth,  Saracen,  and  Sarma- 
tian  appear  on  the  scene  from  the  obscurity  of  their  origi- 
nal seats,  they  blend  with  grace  in  the  picturesque  narrative. 
Ilis  history  is  like  the  Indus  or  the  Mississippi,  swelling 
and  still  swelling  by  a  thousand  tributary  floods,  which  aug- 
ment its  voluftie,  and  tinge  its  waters,  but  without  destroying 
the  identity  or  the  pervading  character  of  the  stream. 

The  style  of  Gibbon  has  great  merits,  mixed  with  some 
not  trivial  defects.  The  "  luminous  Gibbon,"  was  a  phrase 
of  Sheridan  in  his  speech  on  Hastings's  trial,  with  which 


EDWAED    GIBBON.  277 

Gibbon  was  much  delighted :  but  which  the  malicious  wit 
afterwards  playfully  denied,  and  said  he  must  have  meant 
the  "  voluminous  Gibbon."  Yet  the  epithet  may  well  stand. 
The  diction  is  precise,  energetic,  massive ;  splendid  where 
the  pictorial  demands  of  the  narrative  require  it,  as  that  of 
Livy ;  and  sometimes,  where  profound  reflections  are  to  be 
concisely  expressed,  as  sententious  and  graphic  as  that  of 
Tacitus.  Less  can  be  said  for  the  sources  of  his  diction  ;  it 
is  not  sufficiently  idiomatic  English,  and  bears  everywhere 
the  traces  of  his  early  addictedness  to  French.  The  Galli- 
cisms are  in  many  places  amusingly  perverse.  Thus,  for 
example,  his  constant  use  of  "  prevents  "  in  the  old  sense  of 
"  anticipate  "  sometimes  leads  to  ludicrous  apparent  contra- 
diction, as  when  he  tells  us  that  "  The  prefect  had  signalized 
his  fidelity  to  Maximin  by  the  alacrity  with  which  he  had 
obeyed  and  even  prevented  the  cruel  mandates  of  the  ty- 
rant ; "  or,  again,  that  "  the  fortunate  soil  assisted  and  even 
prevented  the  hand  of  cultivation." 

The  structure  of  his  style  is  open  to  still  greater  objec- 
tions than  his  diction.  Harmonious  as  it  often  is,  it  is  too 
frequently  set  and  formal ;  deficient  in  flexibility.  It  is  apt 
to  pall  on  the  ear  by  the  too  frequent  recurrence  of  the  same 
cadence  at  equal  intervals,  and  the  too  unsparing  use  of  an- 
tithesis. It  is  not  veined  marble,  but  an  exquisite  tessela- 
tion  ;  not  the  fluent  naturally  winding  stream,  but  a  stately 
aqueduct,  faced  with  stone,  adorned  with  wooded  embank- 
ments, or  flowing  over  noble  arches,  but  an  aqueduct  still. 
It  is  a  just  criticism  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  that  probably 
no  writer  ever  derived  less  benefit  from  his  professed  mod- 
els. Pascal,  Voltaire,  Hume,  were  his  delight,  and  he  ac- 
knowledges (as  so  unsuccessful  a  pupil  well  might)  that  he 
often  closed  the  pages  of  the  last  with  a  feeling  of  de- 
spair. Addison  and  Swift  he  read  for  the  very  purpose  of 
improving  his  acquaintance  with  idiomatic  English,  yet,  as 
the  above  critic  remarks,  "  with  so  little  success,  that  in  the 
24 


278  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

very  act  of  characterizing  these  writers,  he  has  deviated  not 
a  little  from  that  beautiful  simplicity  which  is  their  peculiar 
distinction." 

The  irony  of  Gibbon,  on  which  he  evidently  plumed  him- 
self, is  in  him  no  pleasant  feature,  not  merely  because  in 
history  it  can  seldom  be  in  place  if  much  indulged,  but  be- 
cause it  is  especially  distasteful  to  the  great  majority  of  his 
readers  when  applied  to  those  deeply  serious  themes  on 
which  he  usually  exercises  it.  He  flattered  himself,  as 
already  seen,  that  Pascal's  Provincial  Letters  had  taught 
him  to  use  this  weapon  gracefully ;  as  little,  it  may  be  re- 
torted, as  Addison  and  Swift  had  taught  him  the  use  of  idio- 
matic English.  The  difference  between  an  innocent  smile 
and  a  sardonic  grin  is  scarcely  greater  than  that  between 
the  irony  of  Pascal  .and  the  irony  of  Gibbon ;  the  one  speaks 
with  a  sweet  riant  air,  as  with  the  consciousness  that  what  is 
ridiculed  is  ridiculous  ;  the  other  with  a  cautious,  stealthy,  Guy 
Faux  look,  as  if  conscious  of  a  sinister  purpose.  Gibbon's 
irony  almost  always  wears  a  sneer,  and  seldom  provokes  the 
smile  of  the  reader,  even  where  the  subject  does  not  repel  it. 
Not  only  so,  it  is  so  elaborate  as  to  lose  much  of  its  grace  even 
where  innocent ;  in  other  cases  it  is  often  so  masked  as  to 
leave  the  reader  (Pascal  is  never  thus  changeable)  in  doubt 
whether  the  author  meant  what  he  seemed  to  mean,  or 
whether  he  is  not  meditating,  by  the  very  form  of  expres- 
sion, a  pusillanimous  escape  from  the  inferences  that  may 
be  legitimately  founded  on  it. 

We  have  expressed  ungrudging  admiration  of  the  great 
inerits  of  this  astonishing  work.  It  has,  nevertheless,  one 
pervading  blemish,  of  which  we  shall  speak  with  similar  im- 
partiality. That  blemish  is,  of  course,  the  treatment  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

If  the  Christian  public  had  given  itself  time  to  reflect,  it 
would  have  been  seen  that  Gibbon's  attack  really  afforded 
little  cause  for  alarm.     The  purpose  of  the   assassin-like 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  279 

stroke  from  behind  the  curtain  of  his  irony  is  plain  enough  ; 
but  is  really  a  hrutum  fuhnen.  Gibbon  himself  has  pro- 
vided for  his  own  defeat  by  his  very  mode  of  conducting  the 
assault.  If  he  meant,  as  he  seemed  to  insinuaie  rather  than 
affirm  (or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  insinuated  while  in 
words  he  expressly  affirmed  the  contrary),  that  his  "five 
secondary  causes "  gave  a  probable  natural  solution  of  the 
origin  and  early  triumphs  of  Christianity,  —  then  the  whole 
thing  was  a  ludicrous  instance  of  vateQOv  TtQOtSQOv,  or,  as  our 
proverb  has  it,  of  "  the  cart  before  the  horse."  The  story 
begins  all  too  late ;  the  "  causes  "  require  as  much  to  be  ac- 
counted for  as  the  "  effects ;  "  or  rather,  they  are  among  the 
very  effects  to  be  accounted  for.  According  to'this  mode 
of  explaining  the  origin  of  Christianity,  causes  are  assigned 
which  implied  not  only  its  existence,  but  its  activity ;  in 
other  words,  the  hypothesis  assigns  Christianity  itself  as  a 
cause  of  itself,  and  its  success  as  a  ground  of  its  success. 
Thus,  for  example,  if  he  is  to  be  supposed  (as  he  evidently 
wishes  the  reader  to  infer)  to  be  accounting  for  the  purely 
human  origin  and  triumphs  of  Christianity,  —  the  most  po- 
tent secondary  causes  he  assigns  are  the  zeal,  morality,  vir- 
tue, unity ,^  and  so  forth,  of  the  Christian  church ;  mean- 
while, the  very  thing  that  demands  explanation  is  just  the 

1  As  to  his  third  secondary  cause,  "  miracles,"  the  same  may  be  said 
as  of  his  ironically  conceded  primary  cause.  He  either  meant  that 
miracles  had  been  performed,  or  not ;  if  he  did,  he  of  course  concedes 
the  main  point ;  if  he  did  not,  then  he  is  giving  a  nothing  (by  a  new 
name)  to  account  for  the  success  of  Christianity.  If  it  be  said  that 
what  he  meant  was  the  pretension  to  miracles,  though  miracles  there 
were  none,  it  is  very  likely  ;  but  then  it  is  easy  to  reply  that  though 
such  pretensions  have  been  often  of  service  when  a  religion  has  already 
become  accredited,  there  is  no  example  (unless  he  choose  to  heg  the  ques- 
tion by  assuming  it  of  the  Jewish  and  Christian  religions)  of  a  religion 
successfully  ybujidt's^  itself  on  such  hazardous  assumptions,  while  there 
are  many  examples  of  failure  in  such  attempts ;  that  is,  Gibbon's 
cause,  as  usual,  comes  too  late. 


280  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

sudden  apparition  in  the  world  of  this  singular  phenomenon, 
the  Christian  church,  with  this  bright  retinue  of  virtues ; 
how  it  was  that  a  system  from  which  the  Jews  have  re- 
coiled more  than  any  other  nation  for  the  last  eighteen  hun- 
dred years,  should  have  sprung  up  in  their  bosom,  in  spite 
of  all  their  national  antipathies ;  how  it  was  that  a  system 
which  was  scarcely  less  odious  from  its  origin,  its  character, 
its  doctrines  (in  a  word,  every  thing),  to  all  other  nations, 
should  nevertheless  have  found  its  proselytes  so  rapidly  in 
every  part  of  the  Koman  empire  ;  and  in  a  few  centuries, 
not  only  gained  a  sphere  for  the  exercise  of  that  marvellous 
"  virtue "  and  "  zeal "  which  it  indeed  might  cause,  but 
which  could  hardly  cause  it,  but  dethroned  all  the  deities  of 
Olympus,  and  became  the  established  religion  of  the  empire  ! 
That  was  the  problem  ;  and  Gibbon  takes  it  up  long  after 
Christianity  had  made  good  its  footing,  and  assigns,  if  he 
means  what  he  seems  to  mean,  causes  for  its  origin  and  suc- 
cess, which  already  presuppose  both  origin  and  success  !  It 
is  as  though  a  man  were  seeking  the  source  of  the  Nile,  and 
ascending  no  higher  than  the  cataracts,  avows  that  he  finds 
its  fountain  there.  Such  is  the  value  of  Gibbon's  hypothesis, 
supposing  he  intended  his  secondary  causes  to  account  for 
the  origin  and  triumphs  of  Christianity  ;  but,  as  before  said, 
he  made  a  provision  for  his  retreat,  by  nominally  granting 
the  "  truth  of  the  doctrine  and  the  providence  of  God  "  to  be 
the  great  cause  of  the  success  of  Christianity.  Seriously, 
one  would  imagine,  (if  we  did  not  know  his  manner,)  that  he 
meant  all  this  ;  for  in  his  Vindication,  in  reply  to  Davis, 
where  he  takes  occasion  briefly  to  mention  "Watson's  Letters, 
and  to  excuse  himself  from  reply,  he  appeals  to  this  very 
concession  as  a  reason  for  silence  !  He  says,  —  "  The  re- 
marks of  Dr.  Watson  consist  more  properly  of  general  argu- 
mentation than  of  particular  criticism.  He  fairly  owns  that 
I  have  expressly  allowed  the  full  and  irresistible  weight  of 
the  first  great  cause  of  the  success  of  Christianity  ;  and  be 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  281 

is  too  candid  to  deny  that  the  five  secondary  causes,  which 
I  had  attempted  to  explain,  operated  with  some  degree  of 
active  energy  towards  the  accomplishment  of  that  great 
event.  The  only  question  which  remains  between  us  re- 
lates to  the  degree  of  the  weight  and  effect  of  those  secondary 
causes ;  and  as  I  am  persuaded  that  our  philosophy  is  not  of 
the  dogmatic  kind,  we  should  soon  acknowledge  that  this 
precise  degree  cannot  be  ascertained  by  reasoning,  nor  per- 
haps be  expressed  by  words."  ^  This  language,  on  the  sup- 
position that  Gibbon  was  still  really  ironizing,  greatly  aggra- 
vates the  disingenuousness  of  the  "  celebrated  chapters." 
But  either  he  meant  what  he  said,  or  he  did  not ;  if  he  did, 
it  of  course  formally  surrenders  the  argument  which  infidel- 
ity has  founded  on  the  supposed  suflBciency  of  his  "  secon- 
dary "  causes  ;  if  he  did  not  mean  it,  he  of  course  evades  the 
very  question  which  his  antagonist  (and  every  other  discreet 
antagonist)  would  contest  with  him,  by  ironically  affecting 
argument. 

It  may  be  further  remarked,  not  only  that  the  Christian 
feels  that  the  "  secondary  causes  "  of  Gibbon  do  not  touch 
the  principal  problem,  —  but  that  infidelity  has  confessed,  in 
a  most  significant  way,  a  similar  mistrust,  by  laboriously  con- 
structing other,  and  often  reciprocally  destructive  hypotheses, 
to  account  for  the  intractable  phlfeomena.  That  of  Strauss 
is  one,  which,  unlike  that  of  Gibbon,  professes  to  track  the 
origin  of  Christianity  to  its  cradle  ;  but  faithfully  represents 
that  of  Gibbon  and  many  more,  in  one  respect,  that  it  is 
ephemeral.  It  is  even  now  fast  losing  its  transient  prestige. 
These  shining  exhalations  from  the  bog  of  skepticism  glim- 
mer, flicker,  and  vanish.  Fortuitous  myth,  deliberate  fiction, 
deep  fraud  practising  on  simplicity,  deep  fanaticism  practis- 
ing on  itself,  —  have  all.  under  various  modifications  been 
resorted  to,  as  the  contradictory  basis  of  infidel  theories,  and 

1  Miscellaneous  Works,  Vol.  iii.  p.  362.  The  italics  are  the  author's  own. 
24* 


282  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

have  been  successively  abandoned.  The  problem  of  the 
origin  of  such  a  system  as  Christianity  under  such  circum- 
stances, and  with  such  results,  within  a  given  century,  still 
presents  the  ancient  difficulty.  Meanwhile  it  may  now  be 
safely  asserted,  that  the  chief  hypotheses  have  been  exhaust- 
ed ;  and  we  have  reason  to  infer  therefore,  that  the  vast  ma- 
jority who  examine  Christianity  will  be  as  they  have  hith- 
erto been,  of  Butler's  opinion,  that  nothing  but  the  truth  of 
the  gospel  will  harmonize  the  facts. 

But  still  further;  it  is  a  special  weakness  in  Gibbon's 
theory  that  so  far  from  his  "  secondary  causes  "  being  suffi- 
cient to  account  for  the  origin,  they  do  not  even  account  for 
the  progress  of  the  gospel ;  they  are,  when  closely  investi- 
gated, quite  as  often  opposed  to  that  progress  ;  sometimes 
must  have  been  far  greater  hindrances  than  helps.  Nothing 
can  be  more  infelicitous  than  some  of  his  suppositions.  For 
example,  he  imagines  that  the  "  intolerant  zeal "  of  Chris- 
tianity —  which  expressed  the  most  open  and  derisive  con- 
tempt of  all  the  gods,  consecrated  by  the  classic  mythologies 
—  w^as  a  mysterious  advantage  to  it !  That  the  austere  vir- 
tue with  which,  be  it  recollected,  it  not  only  recoiled  from 
the  too  welcome  laxity  of  a  jovial  heathenism,  but  enlarged 
the  circle  of  moral  duties  by  adding  the  demands  of  the 
most  diffusive  and  refined  spiritual  purity  —  would  somehow 
attract  votaries!  That  its  visions  of  immortality  —  of  a 
heaven  so  unalluring  —  of  a  hell  so  terrible  —  would  be  of 
magnetic  force  !  surely  these  are  problematic  auxiliaries. 
Similarly,  some  of  the  facts  he  assumes  are  purely  imaginary  ; 
he  attributes  the  zeal  of  proselytism  manifested  by  the 
Christians  to  a  Jewish  origin,  forgetting  that  the  zeal  of  the 
Tews  was  just  of  the  opposite  kind  ;  that  Judaism  was  as  ex- 
clusive as  Christianity  is  catholic.  There  may  be,  no  doubt, 
zeal  for  freedom  and  zeal  for  slavery ;  but  because  each  is 
zeal,  it  would  be  odd  to  dejive  one  from  the  other.  Another 
cause  to  which  he  attributes  much,  was,  alas !  too  often  non- 


EDWABD    GIBBON.  283 

existent,  and  its  effects  were  at  least  neutralized  by  opposite 
causes.  It  is  the  unity  of  the  early  church  ;  its  close  com- 
pacted organization  !  Surely  a  singular  topic  of  compliment, 
and  even  at  a  very  early  period  a  doubtful  source  of  strength. 
The  divisions,  jealousies,  and  quarrels  of  Christians,  were 
from  the  very  first  their  weakness  and  their  shame ;  and 
must  have  been  at  least  as  influential  to  retard,  as  ever  their 
union  was  to  advance,  the  progress  of  the  gospel. 

In  conclusion,  Christians  may  take  some  encouragement 
from  Gibbon's  failure.  If  ever  man  could  hope  to  be  the 
historic  champion  of  infidelity  with  success,  it  was  he.  His 
work  has  such  prodigious  merits  in  nearly  every  thing  but 
its  treatment  of  Christianity,  as  to  have  procured  it  almost 
universal  perusal ;  it  has  now  been  published  for  the  greater 
part  of  a  century  ;  and  what,  relatively  to  Christianity,  have 
been  its  effects  ?  Quite  inappreciable.  His  management  of 
this  high  argument  is  generally  considered  as  the  great  blot 
of  the  work ;  as  a  sufiicient,  or  even  plausible  account  of 
the  origin  and  early  triumphs  of  Christianity,  it  is  for  the 
most  part  abandoned  by  infidels  themselves. 

The  New  Testament,  somehow,  still  manages  to  impress 
the  bulk  of  mankind  who  examine  it,  with  an  indelible  con- 
viction that  it  is  the  fruit  of  neither  imposture,  fiction,  nor 
fanaticism,  and  that  \}cv^  facts  connected  with  the  propagation 
of  the  religion  it  embodies  are  historic  verities.  Since  men 
have  persisted  in  this  belief,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  such 
men  as  Bolingbroke,  Voltaire,  Hume,  and  Gibbon,  to  disa- 
buse them,  it  is  not  probable  that  the  enterprise  in  which 
such  champions  have  failed  will  be  successfully  achieved  by 
other  hands.  Hence  it  may  be  inferred  that  if  Christianity 
be  false,  it  will,  nevertheless,  not  be  exploded. 

The  manner  in  which  Gibbon  prosecutes  his  object  affords, 
no  doubt,  great  facilities  for  exciting  prejudices  against 
Christianity,  and  ample  scope  .for  his  cherished  sneer. 
Christianity  does  not  enter  on  the  scene  till  it  had  degener- 


284  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ated  in  some  degree  from  its  primitive  purity,  and  had  con- 
tracted many  pollutions.  The  foibles  and  follies  of  its  ad- 
herents, of  course  afford  a  very  easy  triumph  to  the.  satirist. 

The  Christian  religion,  once  originated,  and  having 
achieved  an  initial  success,  was  left  to  struggle  with  all  the 
corrupting  influences  of  the  world,  and,  as  might  be  expected, 
did  not  come  off  uninjured.  Brought  into  contagious  con- 
tact with  false  philosophies  and  degrading  superstitions,  and 
gathering  converts  from  those  who  were  but  partially  re- 
claimed from  either,  no  wonder  that  its  purity  was  blemished. 
But  all  this  which  is  favorable  to  Gibbon's  satire,  is  any 
thing  but  favorable  to  his  argument :  for  the  characteristics 
of  Christianity  to  which,  one  moment,  he  would  fain  assign 
such  wonderful  efficacy,  are  anon  exhibited  in  a  very  differ- 
ent light;  are  alternately,  as  the  exigencies  of  his  argument 
or  the  gratification  of  his  malignity  may  dictate,  the  objects 
of  respect  or  contempt.  Thus  the  zeal  and  the  purity  of 
manners  which  are  now  so  potent  a  cafise  of  success,  are 
now  transformed,  the  one  into  bigotry  and  fanaticism,  the 
other  into  austerity  and  grimace.  But  velis  et  remis ;  if 
Christianity  may  but  be  discredited,  the  historian  seems  but 
little  troubled  by  his  own  inconsistencies.  Thus,  to  give 
other  instances  of  this  blind  animosity :  sometimes  the  Chris- 
tians are,  nearly  all,  povefty-stricken  wretches,  the  very 
dregs  of  society;  presently  they  have  plenty  of  riches 
among  them,  and  the  mere  prodigality  of  their  benevolence 
is  no  inconsiderable  bait  for  proselytism :  at  one  time  the 
early  Christians,  for  a  certain  purpose,  are  too  obscure  to  at- 
tract the  attention  of  the  Roman  great ;  then,  for  another 
purpose,  it  is  suddenly  remarkable  that  illustrious  men  like 
Tacitus  and  Seneca  could  have  been  so  insensible  to  its  exist- 
ence, or  have  regarded  it  with  such  apathy  ! 

The  historian,  in  Short,  has  greatly  diminished  the  perni- 
cious effect  of  his  attack,  by  the  animus  he  everywhere  be- 
trays.    It  is  that  of  inveterate  prejudice,  of  resolute  hostility. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  285 

On  this  one  topic  he  is  never  moved  to  generous  or  noble 
emotions.  The  excellence  of  the  Christian  ethics,  indeed,  is 
coldly  conceded ;  but  even  Gibbon  could  hardly  deny  that. 

The  sixteenth  chapter  is  in  some  respects  worse  than  the 
fifteenth  ;  for  in  his  anxiety  to  depreciate  the  numbers  and 
heroism  of  the  Christian  martyrs,  he  forgets  what  is  due  to 
his  professed  maxims  of  toleration,  and  becomes,  if  not  the 
apologist,  the  palliator  of  the  most  odious  persecution.  But 
his  conduct  here  has  been  rebuked  by  one  whose  eminently 
calm  and  judicial  spirit,  and  exemption  from  all  suspicion  of 
religious  fanaticism,  render  his  testimony  particularly  im- 
pressive. "  The  sixteenth  chapter,"  says  Sir  James  Mackin- 
tosh, "  I  cannot  help  considering  as  a  very  ingenious  and 
specious,  but  very  disgraceful  extenuation  of  the  cruelties 
perpetrated  by  the  Roman  magistrates  against  the  Christians. 
It  is  written  in  the  most  contemptibly  factious  spirit  of  prej- 
udice against  the  sufferers Dr.  Robertson  has 

been  the  subject  of  much  blame  for  his  zeal  or  supposed 
lenity  toward  the  Spanish  murderers  and  tyrants  in  America. 
That  the  sixteenth  chapter  of  Mr.  Gibbon  did  not  excite 
the  same  or  greater  disapprobation,  is  a  proof  of  the  unphi- 
losophical  and  indeed  fanatical  animosity  against  Christianity 
which  was  so  prevalent  during  the  latter  part  of  the  seven- 
teenth century."  ^  It  is  also  well  observed  by  M.  Guizot, 
that  there  is  scarcely  any  thing  in  his  history  that  does  not 
move  Gibbon  more  than  Christianity  and  its  fortunes.  The 
achievements  of  a  vigorous  barbarism  —  the  sanguinary 
conquests,  even  the  odious  cruelties  of  a  Bajazet  or  a  Tam- 
erlane —  are  described  with  more  animation  than  the  moral 
conquests  of  Christianity.  One  would  have  imagined  that 
at  least  the  prodigious  influence  of  Christianity,  true  or  false, 
on  the  world's  history  and  civilization,  would  have  been  a 
tempting  theme  for  the  philosophical  historian's  speculation. 

1  Mackintosh's  Life,  Vol.  I.  p.  245. 


286  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

Yet,  as  the  above  writer  has  observed,^it  is  a  topic  almost 
unappreciated  by  him.  A  single  sentence  from  M.  Guizot's 
article  in  the  BiograpMe  Universelle  well  expresses  the 
above  traits.  "  Apres  s'etre  efforce  de  rebaisser  le  courage 
hdroique  des  martyrs  Chretiens,  il  prend  plaisir  k  c^Iebrer 
les  feroces  exploits  de  Tamerlan  et  des  Tartares  :  la  grandeur 
materielle,  si  on  peut  le  dire,  le  f'rappe  beaucoup  plus  que 
la  grandeur  morale ;  et  les  elans  d'une  vertu  sublime  ne 
penetrent  point  j'usqu'  a  son  ame,  tandis  que  les  ecarts  d'une 
force  barbare  seduissent  son  imagination  et  egarent  son 
jugement. 

It  is  difficult,  as  several  critics  have  remarked,  to  account 
for  Gibbon's  extreme  injustice  to  Christianity,  Some  have 
fancied,  and  himself  in  his  later  days  would  fain  counte- 
nance the  fancy,  that  it  was  partly  due  to  his  "  conservative 
politics ; "  because  he  regarded  Christianity  as  he  would  a 
"  modern  innovation,"  and  yearned,  with,  desperate  fidelity 
to  antiquity,  over  the  old  heathenism  it  supplanted  ;  because 
he  felt  much  as  he  did  at  seeing  the  throne  of  France  me- 
naced by  revolutionary  fury  !  A  remarkable  passage  to 
this  effect  occurs  in  one  of  his  latest  letters  to  Lord  Shef- 
field, dated  1790.  He  says,  "  Burke's  book  is  a  most  ad- 
mirable medicine  against  the  French  disease,  which  has 
made  too  much  progress  even  in  this  happy  country.  I 
admire  his  eloquence,  I  approve  his  politics,  I  adore  his 
chivalry,  and  I  can  forgive  even  his  superstition.  The  prim- 
itive church,  which  I  have  treated  with  some  freedom,  was 
itself  at  that  time  an  innovation,  and  I  was  attached  to  the 
old  Pagan  establishment."  ^  To  most  this  has  appeared  an 
after-tJiought,  and  justly.  For  was  ever  an  argument  more 
suicidal !  When  he  wrote,  Christianity,  right  or  wrong,  was 
in  possession;  and  to  attempt  to  destroy  it  was  to  do  that 
very  work  of  destruction  which  he  professed  to  deprecate  ; 

1  Gibbon's  Works,  Vol.  I.  p.  214. 


EDWARD    GIBBON.  287 

yet  he  had  the  effrontery  to  say  in  his  Memoir,  on  the 
breaking  out  of  the  French  Revolution,  —  "I  have  some- 
times thought  of  writing  a  dialogue  of  the  dead,  in  which 
Lucian,  Erasmus,  and  Voltaire,  should  mutually  acknowl- 
edge the  danger  of  exposing  an  old  superstition  to  the  con- 
tempt of  a  blind  and  fanatic  multitude."  ^  Assuredly  he 
should  have  made  himself  a  fourth  interlocutor  in  the  dia- 
logue, and  confessed  that  he  was  the  greatest  culprit,  in  this 
kind,  of  his  whole  generation.  Christianity,  which,  even  if 
according  to  him  a  "  superstition,"  could  plead  the  hoary 
prescription  of  nearly  two  thousand  years,  he  did  his  best  to 
undermine,  because  so  many  centuries  ago  it  had  dethroned 
poor  Jupiter !  On  the  same  principles,  had  he  lived  in  the 
age  of  Augustus,  he  opght  to  have  exemplified  his  zeal 
against  innovation  by  being  jealous  of  the  upstart  of  Olym- 
pus, pleaded  for  the  restoration  of  Saturn,  or  even  gone 
back  to  the  more  "  primitive  tradition  "  of  "  Chaos  and  Old 
Night ! " 

It  would  have  been  well  if  the  contemporaries  of  Gibbon 
had  adopted  that  moderate  estimate  of  his  attack  on  Chris- 
tianity which  experience  has  now  justified  us  in  forming. 
As  it  was,  the  public  took  fright,  and  numberless  hasty  re- 
plies were  published, —  some  of  them  insolent  and  abusive, 
most  of  them  very  inadequate  in  point  of  learning  and  logic, 
and  none  of  thenj,  if  we  except  those  of  Watson  and  Lord 
Hailes,  of  much  value.  That  of  Watson  alone  touched  the 
real  points  of  the  controversy,  and  showed  that  Gibbon's 
sophistry  left  the  great  problem  as  it  was.  It  is  a  pity  that 
Gibbon,  instead  of  replying,  evaded  it  by  that  disingenuous 
feint  of  agreement  on  the  main  point  at  issue,  to  which  ref- 
erence has  been  already  made. 

The  only  adversary  whom  he  honored  with  distinct  ref- 
utation was  Davis,  whose  unworthy  attempt  to  depreciate 

% 
1  Gibbon's  Works,  Vol.  I.  p.  181, 


288  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  great  historian's  learning,  and  captious,  cavilling,  ac- 
rimonious charges  of  petty  inaccuracies  and  discreditable 
falsification,  gave  Gibbon  an  easy  triumph.  It  was,  as  he 
said,  a  "  sufficient  humiliation,"  to  vanquish  such  an  adver- 
sary. At  the  same  time  it  must  be  confessed,  that  he  se- 
lected his  adversary  discreetly. 

The  charges  of  inaccuracy  against  Gibbon  in  the  citation 
of  his  authorities  have  often  been  repeated,  but  they  are  not, 
except  to  a  very  limited  extent,  substantiated  in  the  estimate 
of  the  most  recent  and  competent  of  his  editors.  In  his 
treatment  of  Christianity,  his  inveterate  and  resolute  prej- 
udices may  account  for  his  partial  evidence  and  perverted 
logic  without  accusing  him,  as  Davis  did,  of  ignorance, 
which  cannot  be  suspected,  or  of  deliberate  suppressio  veri, 
which  one  would  not  suspect. 

It  is  impossible  to  enumerate  here  the  various  editions  of 
Gibbon's  works,  or  to  enter  into  the  voluminous  literature 
they  have  evoked.  It  may  be  well  to  mention,  however, 
the  beautiful  edition  of  the  Decline  and  Fall  recently  put 
forth  in  eight  volumes  octavo  under  the  editorship  of  Dr.  W. 
Smith,  and  which  embodies  the  notes  of  Professor  Milman 
and  M.  Guizot. 

He  who  would  obtain  a  full  insight  into  the  character  and 
genius  of  Gibbon,  would  do  well  to  consult  not  only  the 
Memoir,  but  the  Letters  and  Journals;  his  life  was  em- 
phatically  that  of  a  student  and  scholar,  and  these  remains 
as  vividly  illustrate  it,  as  the  Memoir  itself. 


GASSENDI 


PiEBRE  Gassend  Gassendi,  One  of  the  most  distin- 
guisked  philosophers  of  the  seventeenth  century,  was  born  in 
the  last  decade  of  the  sixteenth  (22d  January,  1592),  at  the 
village  of  Chantersier,  near  Digne  in  Provence.  His 
family  was  humble,  but  his  parents  were  virtuous ;  and  to 
their  instructions  and  influence  Gassendi  seems  to  have 
owed  a  more  than  usual  debt  of  gratitude.  His  childhood 
exhibited  the  most  astonishing,  not  to  say  incredible,  pre- 
cocity ;  and,  if  the  feats  told  of  him  are  true,  shows  (as  M. 
De  Gerando  observes  in  his  able  sketch  of  this  philosopher 
in  the  Biographie  Vniverselle)  that  the  feeling  which  is  apt  to 
regard  unusual  precocity  as  a  treacherous  omen  is  not  always 
to  be  trusted.  At  the  age  of  four,  Sorbiere  tells  us,  he 
sometimes  played  among  his  youthful  companions  the  part 
of  a  censor,  and  imitated  the  manner  of  a  preacher..  At 
the  same  tender  age  he  often  crept  out  at  night  to  watch  the 
stars  —  to  the  great  alarm  of  his  parents.  At  ten  he  de- 
claimed in  a  tiny  harangue  before  the  Bishop  of  Digne 
(Antony  of  Boulogne),  on  the  occasion  of  a  pastoral  visita- 
tion ;  which  struck  that  prelate  (as  it  well  might)  with  such 
wonder,  that  he  did  not  hesitate,  in  spite  of  the  aforesaid 
general  distrust  of  precocity,  to  prophesy  the  boy-orator's 
future  eminence.     Either  that,  or  an  early  grave,  or  speedy 

25  (289) 


290  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

fatuity,  would  certainly  be  a  very  rational  deduction  from 
symptoms  of  such  premature  mental  activity. 

Gassendi  was  then  receiving  lessons  from  the  cure  of  the 
village  ;  but  such  was  his  ardor,  that  when  he  had  learned 
the  prescribed  tasks,  he  would  pursue  his  solitary  studies  by 
the  light  of  the  church  lamp.  At  Digne  he  studied  rhetoric, 
and  composed  certain  petites  comedies.  He  then  went  to 
Aix  to  study  philosophy  under  Fesaye,  a  professor  who 
strongly  shared  and  expressed  the  rising  discontent  with  the 
reigning  scholastic  philosophy.  At  sixteen  our  still  beard- 
less philosopher  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  rhetoric  at 
Digne  ;  but,  being  destined  for  the  church,  speedily  returned 
to  Aix  to  study  theology,  and  other  branches  appropriate  to 
the  ecclesiastical  profession.  At  the  early  age  of  twenty- 
one  he  was  simultaneously  elected  to  the  two  chaii's  of  phi- 
losophy and  theology  in  the  university  of  Aix.  He  chose 
the  latter,  and  delivered  his  first  course  extemporaneously. 
He  retained  this  chair  for  ten  years.  Not  content  with 
merely  fulfilling  the  duties  of  his  chair,  he  indulged  in  ample 
excursions  into  almost  every  department  of  science  and 
literature,  and  made  large  collections  of  notes,  which  were 
afterwards  of  great  service  to  him  as  a  philosophical  critic. 
His  favorite  pursuits  in  his  leisure  hours  were  astronomy 
and  anatomy.  He  confesses,  too,  a  passing  penchant  for 
astrology ;  but  it  soon  disappeared,  and  he  became  one  of 
the  most  strenuous  opponents  of  that  delusive  science.  In 
1623,  he  was  presented  to  a  benefice  in  the  cathedral  of 
Digne,  and  gave  up  his  chair  in  order  to  surrender  himself 
more  completely  to  study.  In  the  following  year  he  com- 
menced author  by  the  publication  of  a  portion  of  his  Exer- 
citationes  paradoxicce  adversus  Aristotelem,  a  work  which 
naturally  called  forth,  in  equal  measure,  the  censures  of  the 
servile  lovers  of  antiquity,  and  the  admiration  of  the  ardent 
minds  who  longed  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  in  science  and 
philosophy.      He   himself,   according   to   M.  De  Gerando, 


G4SSENDI.  291 

seemed  half  astonished  at  the  report  of  his  own  artillery. 
But  being  now  committed  as  author,  he  desired,  says  the 
same  writer,  "  s'^clairer  par  des  observations  et  des  conseils 
et  former  des  relations  utiles."  With  this  view  he  made 
excursions  in  Provence  and  Dauphin^,  visited  the  capital, 
and  took  a  journey  to  the  Low  Countries  and  Holland  — 
everywhere  forming  friendships  with  the  literati  of  the  age, 
haunting  learned  establishments  and  consulting  public  li- 
braries. With  similar  views,  as  a  pilgrim  of  science,  he  pro- 
jected,  in  common  with  other  learned  men,  a  journey  to 
Italy  and  Constantinople^  but  this  design  he  never  executed. 
During  his  stay  at  Marseilles,  in  1636,  he  made  some  im- 
portant astronomical  observations  ;  and,  by  the  aid  of  lunar 
eclipses,  ascertained  more  correctly  the  limits,  in  latitude 
and  longitude,  of  the  Mediterranean,  the  length  of  which 
hydrographers,  following  Ptolemy,  had  exaggerated  in  the 
current  charts  by  no  less  than  two  hundred  leagues.  In 
1638,  he  found  an  ardent  friend  and  admirer  in  Louis  de 
Valois,  afterwards  Due  d'Angouleme  ;  and  if  the  philoso- 
pher, who  ever  preferred  studious  retirement  to  public  life, 
had  been  ambitious,  he  might  have  availed  himself  of  this 
patron's  aid  to  secure  station  and  riches.  In  1 645  there  was 
some  thought  of  making  him  tutor  to  the  young  prince,  after- 
wards Louis  XIV.,  but  it  came  to  nothing.  He  was  ap- 
pointed, however,  mathematical  lecturer  in  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  France  by  the  good  offices  of  the  Archbishop '  of 
Lyons,  brother  of  Cardinal  Richelieu.  From  that  ambi- 
tious minister  himself  he  never  received  any  favor  ;  which. 
says  De  Gerando,  is  remarkable,  considering  the  affect?8n 
of  the  Archbishop  and  the  renown  of  the  philosopher.  But, 
too  often,  politicians  regard  neither  affection  nor  merit  where 
talents  cannot  be  serviceable  to  them,  and  Gassendi's  modest 
and  retiring  spirit  was  little  likely  to  help  the  ambitious  car- 
dinal. Meantime,  his  fame  gradually  spread.  Amongst  his 
ardent  admii-ers  appear  royal  and  noble  names  :  —  Christina, 


292  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

Queen  of  Sweden ;  Frederick  III.  of  Denmark ;  a  couple 
of  popes ;  and  several  French  princes.  The  Cardinal  de 
Retz  also  highly  esteemed  and  honored  hira.  But  he  has 
more  legitimate  claims  to  remembrance  than  the  suffrages  of 
contemporaries  illustrious  only  for  rank  and  station ;  and, 
indeed,  with  the  exception  of  De  Retz,  he  is  himself  better 
known  now  than  any  of  the  above-mentioned  admirers.  A 
more  emphatic  testimony  to  the  deserved  esteem  in  which 
he  was  held  is  found  in  his  intimacy  with  all  the  great  liter- 
ati and  philosophers  of  his  day,  with  most  of  whom  he  main- 
tained an  active  correspondence,  which  foi'ms  by  ho  means 
the  least  interesting  portion  of  his  works.  A  formidable  list 
of  these  illustrious  friends  and  acquaintances  is  given  in  Sor- 
biere's  "  General  Preface "  to  Gassendi's  works.  Galileo 
conferred  upon  him  signal  proofs  of  esteem,  and  Gassendi 
consoled  Galileo  in  his^  persecutions  ;  though,  like  Descartes, 
he  prudently  declined  any  chance  of  sharing  them.  The 
martyrs  of  science  have  been  always  scarce. 

The  lectures  of  Gassendi  at  the  Royal  College  were  well 
attended.  To  Astronomy,  which  had  been  too  much  neg- 
lected, he  gave  due  prominence.  Public  speaking,  how- 
ever, was  injurious  to  his  lungs,  which  were  always  delicate, 
and  he  was  at  length  compelled  to  desist.  He  then  repaired 
to  Digne  for  the  benefit  of  his  native  air,  and  also  spent 
some  pleasant  time  under  the  hospitable  roof  of  his  friend 
and  patron  Louis  de  Valois,  Earl  of  Alais.  During  this 
interval  he  was  chiefly  occupied  in  composing  his  biogra- 
phies. He  finally  returned  to  Paris,  where,  after  a  long 
and  gradual  decay,  he  died  October  14,  1655.  His  death  is 
said  to  have  been  hastened  by  the  mad  phlebotomy  then  in 
vogue.  He  himself  had  often  condemned  the  practice ; 
somewhat  inconsistently,  it  will  be  thought,  since  he  allowed 
himself  to  be  killed  by  the  Sangrados  of  his  day.  He  is 
said  to  have  reconciled  himself  to  the  treatment  to  which  he 
submitted,  though  he  could  not  approve  it,  by  the  thought 


aAssENDi.  293 

that  the  weakness  it  induced  would  probably  diminish  the 
pangs  of  dissolution.  His  last  words,  as  he  begged  his  at- 
tendant to  feel  the  feeble  pulsation  of  his  heart,  were,  "  You 
see  what  man's  life  is ! "  He  was  buried  in  the  church  of 
St.  Nicholas  des  Champs,  where  he  is  honored  by  a  mau- 
soleum and  bust. 

Th«  countenance  of  Gassendi  is  very  imposing.  The 
broad,  massive  brow,  full  eye,  and  expressive  contour  of  the 
face,  bespeak  a  mind  full  of  intelligence,  vivacity,  and  be- 
nevolence.^ 

The  character  of  Gassendi's  intellect  is  everywhere  indi- 
cated by  his  works  ;  —  it  was  critical  rather  than  inventive. 
Probably  no  one  was  ever  better  quahfied  to  be  a  genuine 
historian  of  philosophy,  possessing  as  he  did  keen  analytical 
skill,  in  conjunction  with  profound  and  accurate  erudition. 
His  A%/i<a5'maPAi7o50jt)AiCM»i  everywhere  displays  these  char- 
acteristics. It  is  a  vast  attempt  to  exhibit  in  one  encyclo- 
paedic view  the  entire  circle  of  science  as  then  known  ;  — 
logics,  physics,  physiology,  ethics,  all  find  a  place  there. 
Subjects  are  discussed  with  a  minuteness,  copiousness,  and 
patience,  which  remind  one  of  the  style  in  which  questions, 
equally  subtle  and  intractable,  and  not  always  more  profit- 
less, are  treate«tin  the  Summa  Theologice  of  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas. Gassendi's  powers  of  acquisition  must  have  been  sin- 
gularly active ;  nor  was  his  logical  acuteness,  or  the  liveli- 
ness of  his  imagination,  much  inferior  to  the  promptness  and 
retentiveness  of  his  memory.  His  learning  is  never  mere 
learning ;  like  that  of  many  of  his  erudite  contemporaries, 
it  ministers  to  his  intellect,  but  does  not  oppress  it.  The 
vivacity  of  his  mind  animates  and  penetrates  the  mass ;  and 

1  The  engraving  in  the  folio  edition  of  his  works  (1728)  is  in  strik- 
ing contrast  with  the  grim  effigies  of  Tycho  Brahe  and  Copernicus  in 
the  quarto  wliich  contains  Gassendi's  lives  of  those  philosophers.  But 
it  must  be  confessed  the  art  of  engraving  had  made  prodigious  pro- 
gress in  the  interval. 

25* 


294  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  acuteness  of  his  reasoning  and  the  exuberance  of  his 
illustrations  relieve  of  much  of  their  tedium  discussions  in 
themselves  often  uninviting  enough. 

The  intellectual  characteristics  of  Gassendi,  as  compared 
with  those  of  the  far  more  original  and  profound  Descartes, 
are  sharply  set  off  in  a  long  and  elaborate  parallel  in  the 
article  by  De  Gerando  in  the  Biographic  Vniverselle,  and 
it  will  be  well  to  find  space  for  a  translation  of  a  few  of  its 
more  discriminating  touches.  "  There  was  no  less  opposi- 
tion," says  he,  "  between  the  character  of  their  minds  than 
between  the  principles  of  their  systems.  The  genius  of 
Descartes,  full  of  originality,  energy,  and  audacity,  aspired 
in  all  things  to  create  ;  the  understanding  of  Gassendi,  re- 
served, prudent,  calm,  and  investigating,  contented  itself 
with  a  sound  judgment  of  every  thing;  Descartes,  shut 
up  in  himself,  strove  to  reconstruct  universal  science  by  the 
force  of  meditation  alone ;  Gassendi,  observing  nature, 
studying  the  writings  of  all  ages,  strove  to  coordinate  facts, 
and  to  make  an  enlightened  election  among  opinions.  The 
former,  proceeding  in  the  track  of  the  geometers,  de- 
duced from  a  few  simple  principles  a  long  train  of  corol- 
laries :  the  second,  imitating  the  naturalists,  collected  a 
great  number  of  given  facts  in  order  to  draw  solid  deduc- 
tions from  their  comparison.  The  former  evinced  admirable 
ability  in  the  art  of  forming  a  system,  the  latter  excelled  in 
the  criticism  of  other  people's  systems.  The  one,  an  abso- 
lute dogmatist,  loved  to  speak  in  the  style  of  a  master,  per- 
haps because  he  was  conscious  of  profound  conviction,  and 
did  not  patiently  bear  contradiction ;  the  other,  a  skilled 
dialectician,  unravelled  objections  with  art,  distrusted  him- 
self, and  easily  entertained  doubts  which  presented  them- 
selves. The  one  made  great  and  veritable  discoveries,  and 
at  the  same  time  wandered  into  rash  hypotheses  ;  the  other 
brought  together  a  great  number  of  partial  truths,  and, 
above  all,  destroyed  a  great  number  of  errors." 


GASSENDI.  295 

The  qualities  of  Gassendi's  mind  are  perhaps  nowhere 
more  distinctly  marked  than  in  his  commentary  on  the 
Tenth  Book  of  Diogenes  Laertius,  and  his  tractate  on  the 
life  and  philosophy  of  Epicurus.  In  his  attempt  to  ascer- 
tain, illustrate,  and  defend  the  philosophy  of  his  favorite 
Epicurus,  there  was  ample  scope  for  his  exuberant  learning, 
his  critical  acumen,  and  his  eclectic  tendencies.  It  is  a  pity 
that  he  should  have  been  so  inordinately  enamored  of  this 
Greek  philosopher ;  for  his  strong  expressions  have  in- 
vited accusations,  and  even  given  color  to  them,  which 
seem  wholly  unfounded.  Whatever  his  predilections  for 
the  atomic  philosophy,  he  explicitly  repudiates  the  irre- 
ligious dogmas  founded  upon  it ;  and  acknowledges  that  a 
supreme  intelligence  alone  created  and  organized  matter, 
alone  imparted  and  conserves  its  laws  and  properties. 
"  Metaphysics,  morals,  and  physics,"  says  M.  De  Gerando, 
"  are  conformed  to  the  opinions  of  Epicurus ;  yet  with  the 
modifications  which  the  principles  of  Christianity  demand." 
Whether  even  the  eclectic  criticism  of  Gassendi  could  quite 
harmonize  such  materials,  even  by  the  most  judicious  selec- 
tions and  rejections,  may  be  a  question  ;  but  that  he  sin- 
cerely thought  he  had  advanced  nothing  contrary  to  Chris- 
tianity, is  evident  from  the  entire  tenor  of  his  declaration ; 
and  he  must  be  believed  unless  we  are  determined  on  a 
more  unpleasaift  alternative  —  that  of  supposing  him  at  least 
as  gi'eat  a  hypocrite  as  philosopher.*  If  the  works  just 
referred  to  exhibit  as  distinctly  as  any  the  more  marked 
features  of  Gassendi's  intellectual  character,  it  is  the  Syn- 
tagma Philosophicum,  of  course,  which  displays  all  the  en- 

1  After  avowing  his  orthodoxy  very  explicitly,  he  says,  in  the  Pro- 
emial  Book  of  his  Syntagma,  "  Et  videri  quidem  potest  Epicurus 
arridere  prae  ceteris  ...  at  non  idcirco  aut  probo  omnia  quae  illius 
sunt, — etiam  Religionis  non  attinentia  placita;  aut  quae  probo  non 
sic  amplector  ut  indubia  certaque  habeam  .  .  . "  —  Opera,  torn,  i., 
p.  25,  Edit.  Florent. 


296  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

dowments  of  this  great  philosopher  in  their  amplest  form. 
The  remarks  on  the  Meditations  of  Descartes,  however, 
(supplied  at  the  request  of  Father  Mersenne,)  best  present 
many  of  its  phases.  They  are  marked  by  an  acuteness  and 
vivacity  which  he  never  surpassed. 

As  a  metaphysician  it  has  been  mentioned  that,  however 
ingenious  and  learned,  he  is  yet  critical  rather  than  creative. 
The  same  must  be  said  of  him  as  a  mathematician  and 
physical  philosopher.  His  attainments  in  the  mathematics 
were  such  as  to  elicit  the  praises  of  Barrow,  no  incompetent 
judge ;  and  doubtless  his  fame  might  have  been  yet  greater 
had  he  not,  like  Barrow  himself,  Pascal,  Descartes,  and  so 
many  other  great  mathematicians,  varied  or  combined  this 
study  with  so  many  very  different  pursuits.  It  seems,  if  we 
may  judge  by  the  conduct  of  almost  every  great  mathema- 
tician from  the  time  of  those  just  mentioned  to  the  present 
day,  that,  delightful  as  is  the  discovery  and  contemplation 
of  mathematical  truth,  it  cannot  alone  fill  or  content  the 
mind.  It  is  hardly  possible  to  name  instances  of  great 
mathematicians  who  are  known  only  as  great  mathematicians, 
or  who  have  not  profoundly  studied  some  branches  either  of 
physics  or  abstract  science.  Gassendi,  according  to  Sorbiere, 
avowedly  valued  mathematics  chiefly  as  a%  indispensable 
instrument  of  discovery  in  physical  science. 

Ardently  attached  to  the  new  philosophy*of  experiment, 
Gassendi  was  one  of  the  first  Frenchmen,  if  not  the  first, 
who  fully  appreciated  Bacon,  and  in  introducing  him  to 
his  countrymen,  paid  ungrudging  homage  to  his  genius.^ 
Though  such  an-  admirer,  however,  of  the  new  school  of 
physics,  he   himself,   as   in   other   departments,  made   but 

1  "  Is  videlicet  meditatus  attendensque,  quam  sit  exiguum,  quod, 
ex  quo  tempore  homines  philosophari  caeperunt,  circa  veritatem,  in- 
timaeque  rerum  naturse  notitiam  consecuti  sunt ;  ausu  vere  Heroico 
novam  tentare  viara  est  ausus  .  .  .  ."  —  Opera,  torn,  i.,  p.  55,  Edit. 
Florent. 


GASSENDI.  297 

moderate  contributions  to  discovery.  Here,  too,  his  genius 
was  critical.  But  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten  that  he  was  the 
first  to  observe  the  transit  of  a  planet  across  the  sun's  disc — 
verifying  the  prediction  of  Galileo  —  and  that,  as  before 
mentioned,  he  made  some  valuable  hydrographic  corrections 
by  means  of  lunar  eclipses. 

As  Gassendi  is  among  the  most  literary  of  philosophers, 
so  he  is  also  among  the  most  voluminous.  Six  volumes 
folio  attest  the  vastness  of  his  industry,  no  less  than  his 
erudition  and  versatility.  These  have  been  twice  printed ; 
once  at  Lyons  in  1658  under  the  editorship  of  Montmort 
and  Sorbiere,  and  once  at  Florence  in  1728.  The  first  two 
volumes  are  occupied  entirely  with  his  Syntagma  Philosoph- 
icum ;  the  third  contains  his  critical  writings  on  Epicurus, 
Aristotle,  Descartes,  Fludd,  and  Lord  Herbert,  with  some 
occasional  pieces  on  certain  problems  of  physics;  the 
fourth,  his  Institutio  Astronomica,  and  his  Commentarii  de 
rebus  celestibus ;  the  fifth,  his  commentary  on  the  Tenth 
Book  of  Diogenes  Laertius,  the  biographies  of  Epicurus, 
Peiresc,  Tycho  Bralie,  Copernicus,  Peurbach,  Regiomon- 
tanus,  with  some  tracts  on  the  value  of  Ancient  Money,  on 
the  Roman  Calendar,  and  on  the  theory  of  music ;  to  all 
which  is  appended  a  large  and  prolix  piece,  entitled  Notitia 
Ecclesice  Dlniensis  ;  — "the  sixth  volume  contains  his  cor- 
respondence. The  Xz'we*,- especially  of  Copernicus,  Tycho, 
and  Peii-esc,  have  been  justly  admired.  That  of  Peiresc 
has  been  repeatedly  printed  ;  it  has  also  been  translated  into 
English.  Gassendi  was  one  of  the  first,  after  the  revival  of 
letters,  who  treated  the  literature  of  philosophy  in  a  lively 
way.  His  writings  of  this  kind,  though  too  laudatory  and 
somewhat  diffuse,  have  great  merit ;  they  abound  in  those 
anecdotal  details,  natural  yet  not  obvious  reflections,  and 
vivacious  turns  of  thought,  which  made  Gibbon  style  him, 
with  some  extravagance  certainly,  though  it  was  true 
enough  up  to  Gassendi's  time — "le  meilleur  philosophe  des 


298  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

litterateurs,  et  le  meilleur  litterateur  des  philosophes."  Gas- 
sendi  wrote  in  Latin  ;  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  he  did  not 
compose  some  of  his  works  in  French.  There  is  little 
doubt  that  he  would  have  given  us  another  specimen  of  that 
happy  philosophical  style  in  which  his  countrymen  have  so 
signally  excelled  from  Descartes'  time  downwards ;  as  it  is, 
his  writings,  as  might  be  expected  from  the  qualities  of  his 
mind,  are  perspicuous  and  lucid  in  an  eminent  degree  ;  but 
the  style  is  very  diffuse,  and,  in  many  cases,  cumbersome,  a 
fault  which  it  may  be  reasonably  supposed  would  have  been 
obviated  if  he  had  written  in  his  vernacular.  His  illustra- 
tions and  examples,  especially  in  the  leisurely  exposition  of 
the  voluminous  Syntagma  Philosophicum,  are  often  multi- 
plied to  tediousness,  though  generally  apt  and  well  selected. 
Instances  both  of  the  merits  and  faults  in  question  may  be 
seen  in  the  parts  of  the  Syntagma  where  he  treats  "  de  Sen- 
sibus  speciatim"  and  (more  briefly)  in  the  chapter  "de 
Instinctu  Brutorum."  ^ 

The  personal  character  of  Gassendi  must  have  been  ex- 
ceedingly attractive.  Of  his  winning  manners,  agreeable 
social  qualities,  and  modesty,  there  is  a  pleasing  proof  re- 
corded by  Sorbiere,  and  pleasantly  repeated  by  De  Gerando. 
"  Marivat  having  travelled  from  Paris  to  Grenoble  in  his 
company  without  suspecting  his  name,  desired  on  arriving 
to  be  presented  to  the  celebrated  Gassendi.  He  was  greatly 
surprised  to  recognize  him  in  the  amiable  companion  with 
whom  he  had  conversed  on  the  route.  This  behavior  reminds 
us  of  that  of  Plato,  when  he  returned  from  Syracuse  into 
Greece."  His  temper  and  manners  were  such  as  became  a 
philosopher,  and  a  Christian  philosopher  rather  than  a  dis- 
ciple of  Epicurus ;  whose  precepts,  if  capable  of  being 
harmonized  with  virtue,  are  yet  easily  perverted  to  vice. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether  any  philosopher  ever  lived  more 

1  Syntag.  Phil.  Physicae,  part  iii.,  sect,  ill.,  lib.  vii. ;  viii.,  cap.  v. 


GASSENDI.  299 

philosophically  than  Gassendi,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  tes- 
timony of  Sorbiere  in  the  preface  to  the  Opera  Omnia.  His 
eulogium  records  virtues  which  make  us  love  the  man  even 
more  than  we  revere  the  philosopher ;  and  with  a  trait  or 
two  from  it  we  shall  conclude  this  notice  of  his  character. 
"  When  1  consider  his  private  life,  I  seem  to  see  before  me 
some  anchorite,  who,  in  the  midst  of  a  crowded  city,  has  set 
up  the  severe  rule  of  the  desert ;  so  heartily  did  he  embrace 
a  life  of  poverty,  chaste  celibacy,  and  obedience,  though  un- 
constrained by  any  vows.  Contented  with  little,  he  envied 
none  their  riches  ;  none  the  richer  for  the  patronage  of  the 
wealthy,  he  dispensed  whatever  he  received  with  a  liberal 
hand.  He  was  voluntarily  abstemious,  rarely  touched  flesh, 
generally  subsisted  on  vegetables,  and  breakfasted  and  sup- 
ped on  oatmeal  porridge."  Sorbiere  pronounces  a  deserved 
eulogium  on  his  modesty,  humility,  and  benevolence. 

The  precise  character  and  position  of  the  philosophic  sys- 
tem of  Gassendi  has,  like  that  of  so  many  other  philoso- 
phers, been  much  debated.  It  is  a  topic  which  there  is  no 
space  to  discuss  here,  but  which  cannot  be  wholly  passed  by, 
since  from  misapprehension  Gassendi  has  been  treated 
with  less  than  justice  by  eminent  philosophical  critics,  and 
among  the  rest  by  Dugald  Stewart  in  the  "Preliminary 
Dissertation." 

By  critics  in  general,  fifty  years  ago,  he  would  have  been 
regarded  as  a  genuine  precursor  of  the  naked  and  undis- 
guised sensational  French  philosophy  of  the  last  century ; 
by  other  and  later  critics,  he  is  represented  as  having  taught 
a  philosophy  not  very  dissimilar  in  its  main  principles  from 
that  of  Locke.  Locke,  indeed,  is  even  supposed  by  some  to 
have  derived  more  from  the  acute  Frenchman  than  he  has 
allowed  the  generality  of  his  readers  to  suspect.  Of  this  a 
word  or  two  presently. 

Meantime,  the  truth  with  regard  to  Gassendi  seems  to  be 
that,  like  many  other  phildSophers  who  have  written  folios, 


300  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  produced  their  works  at  distant  intervals  and  under 
very  different  circumstances,  he  has  not  been  altogether  con- 
sistent in  the  exhibition  of  himself.  Assuredly  his  tone  is 
very  different  when  urging  with  so  much  vigor  all  the  possible 
"  objections  "  which  ingenuity  could  discover  to  Descartes' 
Meditations,  and  when  systematically  developing  his  own 
doctrines  in  his  Syntagma  Philosophicum.  "  The  main 
scope,"  says  Dugald  Stewart  in  the  Preliminary  Dissertation, 
"  of  Gassendi's  argument  against  Descartes  is  to  materialize 
that  class  of  our  ideas  which  the  Lockists  as  well  as  the 
Cartesians  consider  as  the  exclusive  objects  of  the  power  of 
reflection,  and  to  show  that  these  ideas  are  all  ultimately  re- 
solvable into  images  or  conceptions  borrowed  from  things 
external."  If  we  look  only  at  the  animadversions  on  Des- 
cartes, there  is  much  to  favor  these  observations.  But  then," 
again,  as  Hallam  justly  observes,  if  we  examine  the  Syntagma 
Philosophicum,  even  the  Proemial  Book,  even  the  Logic,  but 
more  especially  the  important  chapters  in  the  Physics  "  De 
Phantasia  "  and  "  De  Intellectu,"  we  cannot  fail  to  perceive 
that  this  estimate  is  erroneous,  and  that  Gassendi  is  very  far 
indeed  from  resolving  all  the  phenomena  of  mind  into  sensa- 
tion. This  Hallam  has  truly  remarked,  and  has  supplied  a 
few  extracts  from  the  above  chapters  of  Gassendi  in  proof. 
The  explanation  of  the  apparent  discrepancies,  this  writer 
says,  is  difficult.  "  Whether  he  urged  some  of  his  objections 
against  the  Cartesian  metaphysics  with  a  regard  to  victory 
rather  than  truth,  or,  as  would  beT  the  more  candid  and  per- 
haps more  reasonable  hypothesis,  he  was  induced  by  the 
•acuteness  of  his  great  antagonist  to  review  and  reform  his 
own  opinions,  I  must  leave  to  the  philosophical  reader."  ^ 

It  seems  highly  probable  that  both  explanations  are  cor- 
rect.    In  accepting  Mersenne's  invitation,  issued  by  Descar- 
tes' commands,  to  find  as  much  fault  as  possible  with  the 
celebrated   Meditations    (which   made  such  pretensions  to 
1  Literature  of  Europ*  "Vol.  iv.  p.  203. 


GASSENDI.  301 

logical  rigor),  Gassendi  would  naturally  be  tempted  to 
urge  every  objection  to  the  uttermost ;  and  would  proba- 
bly challenge  the  proof  of  assertions,  when  he  thought  it 
weak,  not  less  where  he  agreed  with  the  conclusions  them- 
selves than  where  he  denied  them.  This  seems  to  have  been 
obviously  his  course  in  some  cases.^  In  such  a  controversy 
the  true  position  is  apt  often  to  be  forgotten  both  by  him 
who  writes  and  by  him  who  reads.  Challenged  to  show  the 
invalidity  of  the  reasoning  which  is  employed  to  support  a 
given  conclusion,  the  objector  is  apt  to  speak  and  to  be  in- 
terpreted as  if  he  contended  not  only  for  the  validity  of  his 
objections,  but  for  an  opposite  conclusion  from  that  of  his 
opponent.  This  may  or  may  not  be.  In  Gassendi's  case  it 
is  sometimes  the  conclusion  as  well  as  the  reasoning,  some- 
times the  reasoning  only,  to  which  he  is  opposed. 

From  Gassendi's  "  objections  "  his  own  positive  opinions 
on  the  points  in  question  are  not  always  inferrible.  We 
must  look  at  his  dogmatical  explanations  of  his  own  views 
as  a  safer  criterion,  and  we  find  these  in  the  Syntagma.  It 
must  be  added  that  a  certain  degree  of  personal  feeling 
evidently  gave  sharpness  to  his  criticisms  on  Descartes ;  and 
philosopher  though  he  was,  being  still  a  mortal  man,  this 
could  not  but  exert  some  influence.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  writing  his  Syntagma,  Gassendi  was  freed  from  all 
such  bias  ;  he  was  no  longer  the  advocate,  but  the  judge ; 
he  had  to  show,  not  merely  that  such  reasoning  op  behalf  of 
such  and  such  conclusions  was  not  valid,  but  what  conclu- 
sions he  held  himself.  He  had  also  had  the  opportunity  of 
reading  all  his  great  antagonist's  "  criticisms  "  on  his  own 
"  criticisms,"  and  doubtless  profited  by  them ;  and  lastly, 
though  the  interval,  as  Hallam  says,  between  the  contro- 
versy with  Descartes  and  the  commencement  of  the  ponder- 

1  It  must  have  been  so  when  so  severely  challenging  Descartes' 
proof  of  the  immateriality  of  the  soul,  or  of  the  existence  of  the  ma- 
terial world,  for  Gassendi  denied  neither.       |ttk 
26 


302  KEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ous  Syntagma  Philosophicum  was  but  brief —  the  dates 
being  1 641  and  1 642  —  yet  before  its  author  had  reached 
the  chapters  "  De  Phantasia  "  and  "  De  Intellectu  "  (nearly- 
one  thousand  closely  printed  folio  columns  from  the  com- 
mencement), he  would  have  had  abundant  time  to  review 
any  opinions  of  an  earlier  date,  and  profit  by  the  discussions 
with  his  illustrious  opponent. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  the  chapter  on  the  "  Human  Intellect " 
shows  incontrovertibly  that  Gassendi  was  far  removed  from 
the  sensationalists.  While  he  maintains  constantly  his  favor- 
ite maxim  "  that  there  is  nothing  in  the  intellect  which  has 
not  been  in  the  senses ; "  while  he  contends  that  the  imagi- 
native faculty,  "  phantasia,"  is  the  counterpart  of  sense ;  that 
like  that,  as  it  has  to  do  with  material  images,  it  is  itself 
material,  and  essentially  the  same  both  in  men  and  brutes, — 
the  chapter  "  De  Intellectu  "  plainly  proves  that  he  could 
consistently  mean  nothing  more  than  that  "  sensations  "  are 
the  invariable  and  indispensable  antecedents  and  conditions 
of  the  evolution  of  the  phenomena  of  intellect ;  for  he  admits 
that  the  intellect,  which  he  affirms  to  be  "  immaterial "  —  the 
most  chai*acteristic  distinction  of  humanity  —  attains  notions 
and  truths  of  which  no  effort  of  sensation  or  imagination  can 
give  us  the  slightest  apprehension.^  He  instances  in  the 
capacity  of  forming  "  general  notions  ;  "  in  the  very  concep- 
tion of  universality  itself,^  to  which  he  says  brutes,  who  par- 
take as  truly  as  men  in  the  faculty  he  calls  "  phantasia," 
never  attain  ;  in  the  notion  of  God,  whom  he  says  we  may 
imagine  to  be  corporeal,  but  understand  to  be  incorporeal ; 


1  '•  Itaque  est  in  nobis  intellectionis  species  qua  ratiocihando  eo  pro- 
vehlmur,  ut  aliquid  intelligamus,  quod  imaginari  seu  cujus  habere  obver- 
santem  imaginem,  quantumcunque  animi  vireis  contenderimus,  non  possi- 
mus."  —  De  Intellectu,  cap.  ii.     Opera,  Tom.  ii.,  p.  383. 

2  "Non  modo  universalia,  universalcisve  notiones  formamus,  sed 
percipimus  quoque  ipsM»  rationem  universalitatis."  — lb.,  p.  384. 


GA8SENDI.  303 

and  lastly  in  the  "  reflex  actions  "  by  which  the  mind  makes 
its  own  phenomena  and  operations  the  objects  of  attention.^ 

His  remarks  on  the  last  point  —  his  very  phraseology, 
"actiones  reflexivae,"  certainly  remind  one  of  Locke,  and 
have  suggested  that  Gassendi's  system  was  the  source  of 
Locke's.  It  was  so,  exclaims  Stewart,  of  the  false  system 
of  Locke  into  which  the  sensational  schools  of  France  dis- 
torted that  of  the  English  philosopher.  To  this  it  seems 
sufficient  to  reply,  as  before,  that  Gassendi  himself,  in  his 
more  deliberate  exhibition  of  his  philosophy,  does  not  belong 
to  those  schools.  At  the  same  time,  whether  Locke  had 
ever  studied*  the  system  of  Gassendi  is  somewhat  doubtful. 
That  he  was  not,  at  all  events,  conscious  of  any  signal  ob- 
ligations to  Gassendi,  may  be  inferred  from  the  following 
reasons:  —  1.  Locke's  distinct  assertion,  to  Stillingfleet  and 
others,  that,  right  or  wrong,  his  system  had  been  the  fruit 
of  his  own  excogitation.  2.  That  if  he  had  consciously 
borrowed  from  Gassendi,  he,  who  was  a  model  of  honor  and 
candor  as  a  writer,  would  not  have  failed  to  acknowledge  his 
obligations.  3.  The  very  name  of  Gassendi  scarcely  occurs 
in  all  his  writings ;  ^  and  though  it  may  be  said  that  this 
silence  was  natural  if  conscious  that  he  had  stolen,  it  is  in- 
consistent with  his  character  ihat  he  should  have  so  acted  ; 
the  silence  would  have  become  a  thief,  but  not  John  Locke. 
4.  He  was  no  helluo  librorum,  and  the  Syntagma  extends  to 
two  ponderous  folios.  It  is  true  that  the  abridgment  by 
Bernier  in  eight  volumes  (if  such  an  abuse  of  the  term  may 
be  allowed)  was  published  in  1678,  and  this,  Locke,  who 
was  certainly  in  habits  of  intercourse  with  Bemier  at  Paris 

^  Alteram  est  genus  reflexarum  actionum  quibus  intellectus  seip- 
sum,  suasque  functiones  intelligit,  ac  speciatim  se  intelligere  animad- 
vertit.  Videlicet  hoc  munus  est  omni  facultate  corporeS,  superius.  — 
De  Intellectu,  cap.  ii.,  p.  384. 

2  He  has  just  introduced  his  name  in  the  controversy  with  Stilling- 
fleet, and  that  is  all.  ^  • 


304  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

in  1677,  might  have  seen.  5.  But,  supposing  him  to  have 
seen  it,  what  then  ?  The  utmost  that  can  be  said  is,  that  it 
is  probable  that  the  remarks  on  the  reflex  operations  of 
the  mind,  and  the  terms  "  actiones  refiexivcB  "  (used,  how- 
ever, by  Gassendi  not  with  a  view  to  a  classification  of 
mental  phenomena,  hut  incidentally,  in  proof  of  the  mind's  im- 
materiality) may  have  unconsciously  suggested  to  Locke  his 
second  great  division  of  ideas,  and  the  phraseology  in  which 
he  has  couched  it.  But  the  observations  themselves  are  far 
too  scanty  to  have  been  of  much  service  to  Locke  in  con- 
structing his  general  theory,  still  less  in  that  elaborate  and 
minute  analysis  of  the  "ideas  of  reflection,"  which  consti- 
tutes the  bulk  of  the  "  Essay."  The  whole  of  the  two  books 
on  "  Imagination  "  and  "  Intellect  "  in  the  Syntagma  would 
not  make  above  an  eighth  of  Locke's  "  Essay,"  and  the 
greater  part  of  these  is  occupied  with  questions  which 
Locke  has  expressly  renounced  as  belonging  to  a  hopeless 
psychology  ;  as,  for  example,  whether  imagination  be  ma- 
terial or  immaterial  (Gassendi  deciding  for  the  former)  — 
of  how  many  kinds,  or  how,  mechanically  or  physiologically, 
related  to  sensation  —  whether  and  in  what  sense  it  can  be 
said  to  possess  reason  —  whether  it  be  identical  with  the 
similar  faculty  in  brutes.  Such  questions,  together  with  the 
history  of  opinions,  Gassendi  is  as  prone  to  discuss  as  Locke 
to  decline  them.  The  opinion  of  De  Gerando,  however,  on 
the  relations  of  Locke's  philosophy  to  Gassendi's,  is  well  en- 
titled to  attention. 


JAMES   CRICHTON. 


James  Crichton,  commonly  known  by  the  appellation 
of  the  Admirable  Crichton,  was  born  on  the  19th  of  August, 
1560.^  His  father  was  Robert  Crichton,  who,  in  conjunc- 
tion with  John  Spence,  executed  the  oflBce  of  lord  advocate; 
his  mother  was  Elizabeth,  the  only  daughter  of  Sir  James 
Stewart  of  Beath,  by  Margaret,  the  eldest  daughter  of  Lord 
Lindsay  of  Byres.  It  appears  highly  probable,  if  not  cer- 
tain, that  by  the  father's  side,  he  derived  his  lineage  from 
Sir  Robert  Crichton  of  Sanquhar,  ancestor  of  the  earl  of 
Dumfries  ;  and  his  maternal  grandfather,  ancestor  of  the  earl 
of  Moray,  was  the  son  of  Lord  Avandale,  who  was  descended 
from  Murdac  duke  of  Albany,  and  through  him  from  Robert 
IL  It  is  inde^Lto  be  recollected  that  the  birth  of  the  first 
Lord  Avandale  was  illegitimate  ;  but  it  is  likewise  to  be  recol- 
lected that  he  obtained  letters  of  legitimation  under  the  great 
seal.    His  grand-uncle  Lord  Methven  was  the  third  husband 

1  An  Italian  broadside,  printed  at  Venice  in  1580,  states  that  ho  had 
completed  the  twentieth  year  of  his  age  on  the  19tli  of  August.  This 
curious  document,  which  was  lately  discovered,  and  which  affords 
some  confirmation  of  the  account  which  Manutius  and  Imperiali 
have  given  of  Crichton's  character  and  attainments,  may  be  found  in 
the  appendix  to  the  second  edition  of  Mr.  Tytler's  Lift  of  the  Admi- 
rable Crichton,  p.  289.     Edinb.  1823,  12mo. 

26  *  (306) 


306  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

of  Margaret  Tudor,  the  relict  of  James  IV.  It  is  therefore 
sufficiently  obvious  that  he  was  entitled  to  speak  of  his  high 
descent ;  but  his  extraordinary  endowments  of  mind  con- 
ferred upon  him  much  higher  distinction  than  he  could 
derive  from  any  accidental  circumstances  of  birth.  The 
place  of  his  birth  is  somewhat  doubtful.  According  to  one 
tradition,  he  was  born  in  the  castle  of  Cluny,  situated  on  a 
small  lake  bearing  the  same  name  ;  but  as  the  father  did  not 
acquire  his  estate  in  Perthshire  till  two  years  after  the  birth 
of  James,  his  eldest  son,  this  may  be  considered  as  entitled 
to  less  attention  than  another  tradition,  which  represents  him 
as  having  been  born  at  EUiock  in  Dumfriesshire,  the  more 
ancient  seat  of  the  family.  The  estate  of  Cluny,  which 
belonged  to  the  bishopi-ic  of  Dunkeld,  was  conveyed  to  the 
king's  advocate  by  Robert  Crichton,  the  last  popish  bishop 
of  that  wealthy  see. 

In  the  year  1570,  when  he  had  only  attained  the  age  of 
ten,  he  was  sent  to  the  university  of  St.  Andrews,  where  he 
was  entered  at  St.  Salvator's  College.  According  to  Aldus 
Manutius,  his  father  placed  him  under  the  tuition  of  Bu- 
chanan, Hepburn,  Robertson,  and  Rutherford,  who  are  all 
mentioned  as  very  eminent  persons.  John  Rutherford, 
whose  name  is  sufficiently  known,  was  provost  of  the  col- 
lege to  which  Crichton  belonged.  Buchanan,  who  was  prin- 
cipal of  St.  Leonard's  College,  resigned  his  office  about  the 
time  when  he  became  a  student;  but,  according  to  the  state- 
ment of  his  Italian  friend,  he  was  partially  educated  along 
with  the  young  king  of  Scotland;  and  Buchanan  was  ap- 
pointed to  the  office  of  preceptor  to  the  king  when  he 
quitted  St.  Andrews,  in  the  year  1570.  On  the  20th  of 
March,  1573,  or,  according  to  our  present  mode  of  compu- 
tation, 1574,  Crichton  took  the  degree  of  A.  B.  He  pro- 
ceeded A.  M.  in  the  year  1575,  and  thus  completed  the 
regular  course  of  study  at  the  premature  age  of  fifteen. 
In  the  university  of  St.  Andrews,  the  candidates  for  the 


JAMES    CRICHTON.  307 

higher  degree  were  then  distributed  into  circles,  according 
to  the  comparative  proficiency  displayed  in  the  course  of 
their  previous  examinations.  Each  circle  was  likewise 
formed  on  the  same  principle.  Of  the  thirty-six  masters 
who  took  their  degrees  on  this  occasion,  there  were  three 
circles ;  and  the  third  name  in  the  first  circle  is  that  of 
James  Crichton.  At  the  head  of  the  list  appears  David 
Monypenny.  It  is  highly  probable  that  Crichton  was  the 
youngest  of  all  those  graduates ;  and  as  his  proficiency  was 
only  excelled  by  two  out  of  thirty-five,  it  is  evident  that  he 
had  already  begun  to  distinguish  himself  by  his  extraordi- 
nary aptitude  in  the  acquisition  of  knowledge. 

As  the  king  was  six  years  younger  than  Crichton,  they 
could  not  well  participate  in  the  same  studies,  although  they 
could  receive  instructions  from  the  same  tutors.  Crichton 
must  have  continued  to  devote  himself  with  intense  ardor 
to  the  pursuits  of  science  as  well  as  literature ;  for  to  a 
knowledge  of  many  languages  he  added  a  familiar  acquaint- 
ance with  the  philosophy  and  even  the  theology  of  the  age. 
The  power  of  genius  is  shown  in  the  use  of  the  materials 
which  are  placed  within  its  reach ;  but  there  is  no  royal 
road  to  learning,  which,  if  acquired  to  any  extent,  must  be 
acquired  by  much  labor  and  perseverance,  although  their 
particular  degree  must  vary  according  to  the  quickness  of 
apprehension  and  tenacity  of  memory  belonging  to  various 
individuals. 

Crichton  may  for  some  time  have  enjoyed  the  benefit  of 
such  able  instruction ;  for  he  appears  to  have  been  still  re- 
siding in  Scotland  towards  the  close  of  the  year  1577.  His 
subsequent  movements  are  represented  as  being  partly  in- 
fluenced by  some  domestic  disagi'cements.  As  the  father 
embraced  the  reformed  doctrines,  while  the  son  adhered  to 
the  ancient  superstition,  disputes  and  reproaches  could 
scarcely  fail  to  intervene  at  a  crisis  of  such  high  and  gen- 
eral excitement.     The  young  scholar   repaired  to  France, 


308  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

where  he  is  said  to  have  distinguished  himself  equally  by 
his  skill  in  literature  and  in  arms.  Of  a  marvellous  dispu- 
tation which  he  held  in  the  university  of  Paris,  there  is  an 
account  which  passes  very  currently,  although  it  is  only 
stamped  with  the  authority  of  Sir  Thomas  Urquhart. 
According  to  this  account,  he  affixed  a  programme  in  the 
most  public  places  of  the  city,  inviting  all  men  of  learning 
to  meet  him,  after  an  interval  of  six  weeks,  at  the  College 
of  Navarre,  where  he  should  "  be  ready  to  answer  to  what 
should  be  propounded  to  him  concerning  any  science,  lib- 
eral art,  discipline,  or  faculty,  practical  or  theoretic,  not  ex- 
cluding the  theological  nor  jurisprudential  habits,  though 
grounded  but  upon  the  testimonies  of  God  and  man,  and 
that  in  any  of  these  twelve  languages,  Hebrew,  Syriac, 
Arabic,  Greek,  Latin,  Spanish,  French,  Italian,  English, 
Dutch,  Flemish,  and  Sclavonian,  in  either  verse  or  prose,  at 
the  discretion  of  the  disputant : "  ^  in  the  mean  time,  as  we 
are  duly  instructed,  "  the  admirable  Scot  (for  so  from  thence- 
forth he  was  called)  minding  more  his  hawking,  hunting, 
tilting,  vaulting,  riding  of  well-managed  horses,  tossing  of 
the  pike,  handling  of  the  musket,  flourishing  of  colors,  danc- 
ing, fencing,  swimming,  jumping,  throwing  of  the  bar, 
playing  at  the  tennis,  balloon,  or  long-catch,  and  sometimes 
at  the    house-games  of  dice,  cards,  playing   at   the   chess, 

^  Urquhart's  Discovery  of  a  most  exquisite  J^el,  p.  94.  Lond. 
1652,  8vo.  —  This  writer  is  pleased  to  inform  us  that  about  a  fortnight 
before  the  appointed  day  of  meeting,  some  person,  less  acquainted  with 
Crichton  himself  than  with  his  reputation,  subjoined  the  following 
sarcastic  inscription  to  bis  programme  on  the  gate  of  the  Sorbonne  : 
"  If  you  would  meet  with  this  monster  of  perfection,  to  make  search 
for  him  either  in  the  taverne  or  bawdy-house,  is  the  readiest  way  to 
find  him."  The  hint  for  this  part  of  the  story  is  to  all  appearance 
borrowed  from  a  work  of  mere  fancy  in  which  Boccalini  relates  that  a 
similar  mordace  facetla  was  practised  upon  Crichton,  not  in  Paris,  but 
in  Parnassus  •  "  E  chi  lo  vuol  vedere,  vada  all'  hosteria  del  Falcone, 
che  li  fark  mostrato."  (Ragguagli  di  Parnaso,  torn.  i.  p.  181.) 


JAMES    CRICHTON.  309 

billiards,  trou-madam,  and  other  such  like  chamber  spoi-ts, 
singing,  playing  on  the  lute,  and  other  musical  instruments." 
But  when  the  appointed  hour  arrived,  he  acquitted  himself 
with  stupendous  learning  and  ability,  having  for  the  space 
of  nine  hours  maintained  his  ground  against  the  most 
eminent  antagonists  in  all  the  faculties.  The  rector  of  the 
university  concluded  the  ceremony  by  presenting  him  with 
a  diamond  ring  and  a  purse  full  of  gold.  It  would  be  a 
mere  waste  of  criticism  to  enter  into  a  minute  examination 
of  the  narrative  to  which  we  have  now  referred.  The  de- 
tails are  sufficiently  circumstantial,  but  they  have  much  of 
the  aspect  of  a  downright  romance ;  and  such  details  from 
the  knight  of  Cromarty  would  have  rcjquired  the  strong 
confirmation  of  collateral  evidence.  It  might  perhaps  be 
admitted  with  some  degree  of  safety  that  Crichton  was  en- 
gaged in  a  public  disputation  at  Paris,  and  that  he  ac- 
quitted himself  with  consummate  ability ;  but  as  to  his 
fluency  in  twelve  languages,  and  his  maintaining  so  long 
and  powerful  a  contest,  not  merely  with  grammarians, 
rhetoricians,  and  philosophers,  but  even  with  theologians, 
canonists,  and  civilians,  all  these  particulars  must  be  re- 
ceived with  extreme  hesitation ;  and  perhaps  it  may  be  con- 
sidered as  much  more  probable  that  such  a  disputation 
never  took  place  at  Paris  but  was  merely  fabricated  from 
another,  which  took  place  at  Venice. 

The  intellectual  endowments  of  Crichton  seem  to  have 
been  equalled  by  his  personal  accomplishments.  He  is 
highly  celebrated  for  his  martial  powers,  and  as  a  complete 
master  in  the  use  of  the  sword  and  spear.  Some  degree  of 
military  experience  he  must  have  acquired  during  his 
two  years'  service  in  the  civil  wars  of  France  ;  but  this  terra 
of  service  was  apparently  sufficient  to  gratify  his  youthful 
inclination  for  the  life  of  a  soldier  ;  and  he  next  directed  his 
steps  towards  Italy,  where  he  must  have  arrived  in  the  year 
1580.     According  to  Dr.  Mackenzie,  he  proceeded  to  Rome, 


310  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  there  gave  another  demonstration  of  his  talents  for  pub- 
lic disputation  ;  ^  but  this  account  is  evidently  destitute  of  all 
foundation,  and  the  only  authority  alleged  by  its  author  is 
that  of  Boccalini,  whose  meaning  is  either  completely  mis- 
represented or  completely  misunderstood.  Dempster  has 
stated  that  he  went  to  Genoa,  attracted  by  the  offer  of  a 
considerable  salary  ;  but  in  what  capacity  he  appeared  there, 
we  are  left  to  conjecture.  Whatever  might  be  his  first  place 
of  residence  in  Italy,  it  is  at  least  ascertained  that  he  arrived 
at  Venice  before  the  close  of  the  year  1580.  He  now  ad- 
dressed a  Latin  poem  to  the  younger  Aldus  Manutius,  a 
name  highly  celebrated  in  the  annals  of  typography ;  and 
this  laid  the  foundation  of  a  literary  friendship,  which  was 
not  without  considerable  influence  in  perpetuating  his  fame. 
He  likewise  formed  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  other  men 
of  letters,  particularly  with  Sperone  Speroni,  Lorenzo 
Massa,  and  Giovanni  DonatL  An  ode  addressed  to  Massa, 
and  another  to  Donati,  are  preserved  among  his  literary 
reliques.  But  the  friendship  of  Manutius  was  distinguished 
by  a  more  than  ordinary  degree  of  zeal :  he  highly  extolled 
Crichton  when  living,  and  deeply  bewailed  him  when  dead. 
To  the  notices  which  he  has  introduced  into  his  edition  of 
Cicero,  we  are  in  a  great  measure  indebted  for  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  young  scholar's  proceedings  in  the  territory  of 
Venice.  His  edition  of  the  Paradoxa  he  inscribed  "  Nobi- 
lissimo  juveni  Jacoba  Critonia  Scoto  ;  "  and  the  dedication, 
dated  on  the  first  of  June,  1581,  contains  a  recital  of  some 
of  those  literary  exploits  which  astonished  the  Italians.^ 

1  Mackenzie's  Lives  of  Scots  Writers,  vol.  iii.  p.  200.  —  From  the 
very  loose  and  erroneous  account  of  Crichton  which  occurs  in  this 
work,  was  fabricated  a  separate  tract  published  under  the  title  of  the 
Life  of  James  Crichton  of  Clunie,  commonly  called  the  Admirable  Crich- 
ton.   Aberdeen,  1760,  8vo. 

2  The  dedication  of  Aldus  Manutius,  together  with  the  four  Latin 
poems  of  Crichton,  are  reprinted  in  Graevius's  edition  of  Cicero 
De  Officiis,  re.     Amst.  1688,  8vo.     They  may  likewise  be  found  in 


JAMES    CBICHTON.  311 

An  oration  which  Crichton  pronounced  before  the  Doge 
and  the  nobility  of  Venice  excited  the  admiration  of  his 
audience,  by  the  eloquence  of  the  composition,  as  well  as 
by  the  gracefulness  of  the  elocution,  insomuch  that  the  young 
orator  was  regarded  as  a  person  of  the  most  extraordinary  en- 
dowments. He  afterwards  engaged  in  various  disputations 
on  subjects  of  divinity,  philosophy,  and  the  mathematical 
sciences  ;  and  such  was  the  reputation  which  he  now  ac- 
quired, that,  during  the  remainder  of  his  short  career,  he 
seems  to  have  been  viewed  as  one  of  the  wonders  of  Italy. 
It  has  been  thought  a  circumstance  worthy  of  being  recorded 
in  the  life  of  Mazzoni,  celebrated  among  his  countrymen  for 
his  powers  of  literary  debate,  that  he  thrice  encountered 
Crichton  at  Venice,  and  overwhelmed  him  by  the  astonish- 
ing copiousness  and  subtilty  of  his  arguments.  If  it  was 
reckoned  an  honor  for  a  man  of  high  reputation  to  sustain  a 
contest  with  so  youthful  an  antagonist,  we  cannot  fail  to  per- 
ceive the  singular  estimation  in  which  that  antagonist  must 
have  been  held. 

These  intellectual  exertions  were  succeeded  by  an  infirm 
state  of  health,  which  continued  for  upwards  of  four  months ; 
and  before  he  had  completely  recovered,  he  made  an  excur- 
sion to  Padua,  the  seat  of  a  flourishing  university.  The 
professors  in  all  the  different  faculties  were  invited  to  meet 
him  in  the  house  of  a  person  of  rank  ;  and  there,  in  the 
midst  of  a  numerous  assembly,  he  exhibited  new  and  strik- 
ing proofs  of  the  versatility  of  his  genius.  He  commenced 
his  performances  with  the  recitation  of  an  extemporaneous 
poem  in  celebration  of  Padua ;  a  subject  which  was  only 
then  proposed  to  him,  and  which  he  treated  in  a  manner 
that  is  described  as  very  elegant.     With  much^acuteness  and 

the  Biographia  Britannica,  vol.  iv.  p.  452,  and  in  the  appendix  to  Mr. 
Tytler's  Life  of  the  Admirable  Crichton,  p.  292.  Only  two  of  the 
poems,  the  hexameters  on  Venice  and  the  ode  to  Manutius,  occur  in 
the  DelicicB  Poetarum  Scotorum,  torn.  i.  p.  268. 


812  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

learning,  he  afterwards  discussed  various  topics  of  science 
with  the  doctors  who  were  there  assembled ;  and  it  is  particu- 
larly mentioned  that  he  exposed  many  of  the  errors  of  Aris- 
totle and  his  commentators.  Having  thus  displayed  his 
knowledge  for  the  space  of  six  hours,  the  final  theme  pro- 
posed to  him  was  the  praise  of  ignorance ;  and  on  this  sub- 
ject he  pronounced  an  oration,  which  still  further  excited  the 
admiration  of  his  learned  auditors.  A  similar  exhibition 
was  announced  to  be  held  in  the  bishop's  palace,  but,  for 
some  reason  which  is  not  plainly  stated,  it  did  not  take  place. 
The  popular  applause  which  attended  such  demonstrations 
of  intellectual  superiority,  had  too  natural  a  tendency  to  ex- 
cite envy,  and  to  provoke  detraction ;  nor  did  Crichton 
escape  that  lot  which  has  been  common  to  so  many  others. 
On  his  return  to  Venice,  he  was  induced  by  the  malignity 
of  certain  individuals,  whom  he  does  not  mention  by  name, 
to  publish  a  remarkable  programme,  which  has  been  pre- 
served by  his  friend  Manutius.  In  order  to  expose  the  fu- 
tility of  their  cavils,  he  undertook  to  refute  innumerable  errors 
of  Aristotle,  and  of  aU  the  Latin  philosophers,  that  is,  all  the 
schoolmen,  both  in  their  expositions  of  his  doctrines,  and  in 
their  disquisitions  on  subjects  of  theology,  together  with  the 
errors  of  certain  professors  of  mathematics,  and  to  answer 
such  objections  as  might  be  urged  against  him.  He  further 
gave  his  antagonists  the  option  of  selecting  their  topics  of  dis- 
putation from  any  other  branch  of  science,  whether  publicly 
taught  in  the  schools,  or  privately  investigated  by  the  most 
profound  philosophers ;  and  he  undertook  to  return  his  an- 
swers, as  the  proponents  should  themselves  determine,  either 
according  to  the  usual  figures  of  logic,  according  to  the  se- 
cret doctrine  qf  numbers,  or  mathematical  figures,  or  in  any 
one  out  of  a  hundred  different  species  of  verse.  The  chal- 
lenge may  appear  sufficiently  bold,  if  not  arrogant ;  but  unless 
it  came  from  a  person  who  was  conscious  of  possessing  very 
extraordinary  powers  of  intellect,  and  who  had  repeatedly 


JAMES    CRICHTON.  313 

applied  to  them  a  severe  and  unequivocal  test,  it  could 
scarcely  be  viewed  in  any  other  light  than  as  an  indication 
of  insanity.  He  appealed  to  a  community  which  included 
many  competent  judges  of  such  pretensions,  and  therefore 
could  not  hope  to  impose  upon  an  unlearned  multitude. 
The  appointed  place  of  meeting  was  the  church  of  St.  John 
and  St.  Paul ;  and  there,  for  the  space  of  three  days,  this 
young  man  sustained  the  arduous  trial  in  a  manner  which 
fully  justified  his  confidence  in  his  own  intellectual  resources. 
His  friend,  Aldus  Manutius,  was  a  spectator  of  his  triumphs 
upon  this  occasion  ;  and  though  some  allowances  must  doubt- 
less be  made  for  the  warmth  of  friendship,  and  for  an  Italian 
taste  in  writing,  it  is  still  to  be  remembered  that  when  he 
published  his  account,  the  event  to  which  it  referred  was 
altogether  recent,  and  he  necessarily  appealed  to  a  cloud  of 
living  witnesses,  who  would  have  treated  his  panegyric  with 
derision,  if  Crichton  had  obviously  failed  in  supporting  his 
own  lofty  pretensions. 

After  his  departure  from  Venice,  he  betook  himself  to 
Mantua ;  and  there,  according  to  Urquhart's  romantic  nar- 
rative, he  rendered  himself  very  conspicuous  by  his  valiant 
encounter  with  a  fierce  Italian  gentleman,  who  had  recently 
slain  three  antagonists.  Crichton  is  said  to  have  challenged 
this  redoubtable  champion,  and  after  many  efforts  of  mutual 
skill,  to  have  brought  the  matter  to  this  conclusion :  "  His 
right  foot  did  beat  the  cadence  of  the  blow  that  pierced  the 
belly  of  this  Italian ;  whose  heart  and  throat  being  hit  with 
the  two  former  stroaks,  these  three  franch  bouts  given  in 
upon  the  back  of  the  other ;  besides  that,  if  lines  were  im- 
agined drawn  from  the  hand  that  livered  them,  to  the  places 
which  were  marked  by  them,  they  would  represent  a  perfect 
isosceles  triangle,  with  a  perpendicular  from  the  top  angle, 
cutting  the  basis  in  the  middle."^     The  learned  knight  had 

^  Urquhart's  Discovery  of  a  most  exquisite  Jewel,  p.  90. 
27 


314  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

« 

studied  mathematics,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  fully  resolved 
that  his  knowledge  should  be  turned  to  some  account.  This 
combat  he  has  described  in  a  very  circumstantial  manner ; 
but,  viewing  his  unsupported  authority  with  no  small  degree 
of  suspicion,  we  feel  no  inclination  to  repeat  his  martial  de- 
tails, which  however,  are  not  a  little  curious  in  themselves. 
But  it  is  a  fact  confirmed  by  other  evidence  that  Crichton  was 
invited  or  attracted  to  the  court  of  Mantua,  and  that  the 
duke  appointed  him  tutor  to  his  son  Vincenzo  Gonzaga. 
Here,  according  to  the  knight  of  Cromarty,  he  displayed  his 
dramatic  talents  as  conspicuously  as  he  had  formerly  dis- 
played his  learning  and  his  prowess.  In  the  space  of  five 
hours,  he  is  said  to  have  represented  fifteen  different  charac- 
ters, and  to  have  supported  each  of  them  with  marvellous  ef- 
fect. But  his  brilliant  career  was  speedily  to  close.  When 
he  was  one  evening  walking  in  the  streets  of  Mantua  with  his 
lute  in  his  hand,  he  was  unexpectedly  assailed  by  three  in- 
dividuals ;  and  drawing  his  sword,  he  pressed  upon  them 
with  so  much  skill  and  resolution,  that  the  principal  aggres- 
sor was  impelled  by  his  fears  to  discover  himself  as  young 
Gonzaga.  Crichton  fell  upon  his  knees,  and  entreated  for- 
giveness for  an  act  which  evidently  inferred  no  guilt ;  when 
the  prince  instantly  pierced  him  through  the  body,  and  ter- 
minated the  mortal  existence  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
persons  of  the  era  to  which  he  belonged.^     This  act  of  base 

1  Imperialis  Musseum  Hlstoricum,  p.  242.  Venetiis,  1640,  4to. — 
In  mentioning  their  first  encounter,  he  uses  the  expression,  "  con- 
sulto,  an  casu,  incertum  ; "  nor  are  we  in  possession  of  any  more 
specific  information.  With  regard  to  the  date,  there  is  some  degree 
of  uncertainty.  In  the  month  of  November,  1583,  Manutius  be- 
wailed his  young  friend  as  already  dead,  and  pointedly  referred  to 
the  fatal  third  of  July.  Imperiali  likewise  states  that  he  died  on  the 
third  of  July,  1583.  On  the  other  hand,  Serassi,  in  his  Vita  del  Maz- 
zoni,  p.  127,  speaks  of  a  poem  written  by  James  Crichton  on  the  death 
of  Cardinal  Borroinco,  which  did  not  take  place  till  the  third  of  No- 
yember,  1584.     Bat  for  such  a  fact  as  this,  the  authority  of  Manutius 


JAMES    CRICHTON.  3l5 

ferocity  was  perpetrated  on  the  third  of  July,  1583,  when 
Crichton  had  nearly  completed  the  twenty-third  year  of 
his  age. 

The  elegance  of  his  person  had  procured  him  the  admira- 
tion of  those  who  were  unable  to  estimate  the  powers  of  his 
mind.  His  countenance  is  described  as  beautiful ;  but  his 
right  eye  was  marked,  if  not  somewhat  disfigured,  by  a  red 
spot,  or  as  Manutius  describes  it,  a  red  rose  by  which  it  was 
surrounded.  His  reputation  as  a  scholar  did  not  render  him 
indifferent  to  the  more  superficial  accomplishments  of  a 
gentleman ;  his  address  was  courteous,  and  he  was  a  pro- 
ficient in  dancing,  as  well  as  in  the  gymnastic  and  martial 
exercises  to  which  youth  of  his  condition  were  then  ad- 
dicted. 

The  unrivalled  fame  of  this  young  scholar  is  certainly 
allied  to  romance ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  very  difficult 
to  imagine  that  it  was  not  originally  founded  on  some  qual- 
ities which  eminently  distinguished  him  from  other  forward 
and  aspiring  youths,  who  at  that  period  were  sufficiently 
numerous  in  the  more  learned  countries  of  Europe.  A 
reputation  so  splendid,  and  so  uniformly  maintained,  cannot 
reasonably  be  ascribed  to  a  mere  concurrence  of  accidental 
circumstances.'  The  specimens  of  his  Latin  poetry  which 
have  been  preserved  do  not  indeed  contain  any  thing  very 
remarkable ;  but  they  are  few  in  number,  and  were  not 
published  by  himself;  nor  does  his  reputation  depend  upon 
one  species  of  excellence.  He  is  celebrated  for  the  won- 
derful facility  with  which  he  composed  verses,  for  his 
knowledge  of  ten  or  twelve  different  languages,  for  his  ac- 
quaintance with  the  writings  of  the  fathers,  for  his  uncom- 
mon powers  of  memory,  and  for  his  promptitude  and  acute- 
ness  in  public  disputation.     We  must  not  therefore  hastily 

cannot  well  be  called  in  question  ;  and  we  must  rather  conclude  that 
the  poem  was  written  by  another  James  Crichton,  or  by  some  person 
who  thought  proper  to  adopt  his  name. 


m 


316  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

conclude  that  he  "  was  in  Italy  considered  one  of  those  liter- 
ary mountebanks  who  were  numerous  in  that  age  ; "  or  that 
his  reputation  chiefly  depends  on  the  romantic  flights  of  Sir 
Thomas  Urquhart)  who  wrote  about  seventy  years  after  his 
death.  Joseph  Scaliger,  who  flourished  at  the  same  period 
with  himself,  who  professes  to  have  obtained  his  information 
in  Italy,  and  who  besides  was  not  too  prone  to  admiration, 
mentions  Crichton  as  a  prodigious  genius,  and,  indeed, 
enumerates  all  the  most  essential  qualifications  that  are 
commonly  ascribed  to  him.^  His  testimony,  which  is  en- 
tirely overlooked  by  the  late  Dr.  Black,  is  certainly  of  con- 
siderable weight  and  importance.  Crichton  is  likewise  ex- 
tolled in  terms  of  the  highest  admiration,  in  a  work  pub- 
lished so  early  as  the  year  1609,  by  Dr.  Abernethy,  a 
native  of  Edinburgh,  and  a  member  of  the  university  of 
Montpellier.  The  longer  of  the  two  poems  which  he  wrote 
in  celebration  of  his  young  countryman,  commences  with 
these  verses  :  — 

O  foelix  animi  juvenis  Chrichtone !  vigore 
Ingenii  volitante  supra  qui  vectus  in  astra 
Humanam  sortem,  et  mortalis  culmen  honoris, 
Seu  placuit  Musas  colere,  aut  glomeramine  campuni 
•    Tundere  cornipedis,  pictisve  ardescere  in  armis  ; 
Grandia  sublimis  nuper  miracula  mentis  t 

Monstrasti  attonito,  et  rapuisti  protinus  orbi. 

To  the  early  testimonies  which  we  have  already  produced, 
many  others,  somewhat  more  recent,  might  easily  be  added; 
and  we  are  fully  prepared  to  acquiesce  in  the  opinion  of  Dr. 
Johnson,  that  of  Crichton's  history,  "whatever  we  may 
suppress  as  surpassing  credibility,  yet  we  shall,  upon  incon- 
testible  authority,  relate  enough  to  rank  him  among  prod- 
igies." *     Dr.  Kippis,  who  has  written  a  copious  account  of 

1  Scaligcrana,  p.  58.  ^  Adventurer,  No.  81. 


JAMES    CRICHTON.  317 

this  renowned  youth,  has  legitimately  applied  the  test  of 
criticism  to  several  of  the  early  notices ;  and  many  of  his 
strictures,  particularly  those  on  Urquhart  and  Mackenzie, 
every  person  of  a  sober  judgment  must  admit  to  be  too 
well  founded.  We  have,  however,  placed  no  reliance  on 
such  authorities,  but  have  derived  all  our  materials  from 
better  sources.  "  He  appears,"  says  this  biographer,  "  to 
have  had  a  fine  person,  to  have  been  adroit  in  his  bodily 
exercises,  to  have  possessed  a  peculiar  facility  in  learning 
languages,  to  have  enjoyed  a  remarkably  quick  and  reten- 
tive memory,  and  to  have  excelled  in  a  power  of  declama- 
tion, a  fluency  of  speech,  and  a  readiness  of  reply.  His 
knowledge,  likewise,  was  probably  very  uncommon  for  his 
years ;  and  this,  in  conjunction  with  his  other  qualities,  en- 
abled him  to  shine  in  public  disputation.  But  whether  his 
knowledge  and  learning  were  accurate  or  profound,  may 
justly  be  questioned ;  and  it  may  equally  be  doubted  whether 
he  would  have  arisen  to  any  extraordinary  degree  of  emi- 
nence in  the  literary  world.  It  will  always  be  reflected 
upon  with  regret,  that  his  early  and  untimely  death  pre- 
vented this  matter  from  being  brought  to  the  test  of  experi- 
ment." ^  In  all  controversies,  it  is  of  the  first  importance  to 
ascertain  the  real  state  of  the  question.  In  a  youth  cff 
twenty-three,  whatever  superiority  of  intellect  he  may  pos- 
sess, we  do  not  expect  to  find  the  erudition  of  Scaliger  or 
Salmasius.  Those  who  extol  Crichton  as  a  very  extra- 
ordinary person  do  not  necessarily  suppose  that  his  attain- 
ments exceeded  the  limits  of  human  genius ;  but  they  may 
reasonably  believe  that  in  various  departments  of  science 
and  literature  he  arrived  at  a  degree  of  proficiency  wonder- 
fully premature  ;  that  he  evinced  great  energy  of  applica- 
tion, with  unusual  powers  of  memory ;  and  that  of  the 
knowledge  which  he  so  rapidly  acquired,  he  possessed  so 

^  Biographia  Britannica,  vol.  iv.  p.  455. 

27* 


818  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

ready  a  command,  together  with  so  much  promptitude  and 
acuteness  of  mental  exertion,  that  he  appeared  as  a  prodigy 
among  men  of  the  ordinary  standard  of  intellectual  excel- 
lence.^ 

1  "  Ce  fut,"  says  Bayle,  "  I'un  des  plus  extraordinaires  prodiges 
d'esprit  qu'on  ait  j'amais  vus." — (Dictionnaire  Historique  et  Critique, 
torn.  i.  p.  941.)  This  is  scarcely  exceeded  by  the  panegyric  of  Im- 
periali.     See  Musseom  Historicam,  p.  241. 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON. 


Samuel  Johnson,  one  of  the  most  eminent  English  writ- 
ers of  the  eighteenth  century,  was  the  son  of  Michael  John- 
son, who  was,  at  the  beginning  of  that'  century,  a  magistrate 
of  Liclifield,  and  a  bookseller  of  great  note  in  the  midland 
counties.  Michael's  abilities  and  attainments  seem  to  have 
been  considerable.  He  was  so  well  acquainted  with  the 
contents  of  the  volumes  which  he  exposed  to  sale,  that  the 
country  rectors  of  Staffordshire  and  Worcestershire  thought 
him  an  oracle  on  points  of  learning.  Between  him  and  the 
clergy,  indeed,  there  was  a  strong  religious  and  political 
sympathy.  He  was  a  zealous  churchman,  and,  though  he 
qualified  himself  for  municipal  office  by  taking  the  oaths  to 
the  sovereigns  in  possession,  was  to  the  last  a  Jacobite  in 
heart.  At  his  house,  a  house  which  is  still  pointed  out  to 
every  traveller  who  visits  Lichfield,  Samuel  was  born  on  the 
18th  of  September,  1709.  In  the  child  the  physical,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  peculiariti^  which  afterward  distinguished 
the  man  were  plainly  discernible ;  great  muscular  strength 
accompanied  by  much«awkwardness  and  many  infirmities  ; 
great  quickness  of  parts,  with  a  morbid  propensity  to  sloth 
and  procrastination ;  a  kind  and  generous  heart,  with  a 
gloomy  and  irritable  temper.  He  had  inherited  from  his 
ancestors  a  scrofulous  taint,  which  it  was  beyond  the  power 
of  -medicine  to  remove,     ffis  parents  were  weak  enough  to 

(319) 


320  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

believe  that  the  royal  touch  was  a  specific  for  this  malady. 
In  his  third  year  he  was  taken  up  to  London,  inspected  by 
the  court  surgeon,  prayed  over  by  the  court  chaplains,  and 
stroked  and  presented  with  a  piece  of  gold  by  Queen  Anne. 
One  of  his  earliest  recollections  was  that  of  a  stately  lady 
in  a  diamond  stomacher  and  a  long  black  hood.  Her  hand 
was  applied  in  vain.  The  boy's  features,  which  were  orig- 
inally noble  and  not  irregular,  were  distorted  by  his  malady. 
His  cheeks  were  deeply  scarred."  He  lost  for  a  time  the  sight 
of  one  eye,  and  he  saw  but  very  imperfectly  with  the  other. 
But  the  force  of  his  mind  overcame  every  impediment.  In- 
dolent as  he  was,  he  acquired  knowledge  with  such  ease  and 
rapidity,  that  at  every  school  to  which  he  was  sent  he  was 
soon  the  best  scholar.  From  sixteen  to  eighteen  he  resided 
at  home,  and  was  left  to  his  own  devices.  He  learned  much 
at  this  time,  though  his  studies  were  without  guidance  and 
without  plan.  He  ransacked  his  father's  shelves,  dipped 
into  a  multitude  of  books,  read  what  was  interesting,  and 
passed  over  what  was  dull.  An  ordinary  lad  would  have 
acquired  little  or  no  useful  knowledge  in  such  a  way  ;  but 
much  that  was  dull  to  ordinary  lads  was  interesting  to  Sam- 
uel. He  read  little  Greek  ;  for  his  proficiency  in  that  lan- 
guage was  not  such  that  he  could  take  much  pleasure  in  the 
masters  of  attic  poetry  and  eloquence.  But  he  had  left 
school  a  good  Latinist,  and  he  soon  acquired,  in  the  large 
and  miscellaneous  library  of  which  he  now  had  the  com- 
mand, an  extensive  knowledge  of  Latin  literature.  That 
Augustan  delicacy  of  taste,  which  is  the  boast  of  the  great 
public  schools  of  England,  he  never  possessed.  But  he  was 
early  familiar  with  some  classical  writers,  who  were  quite 
unknown  to  the  best  scholars  in  the  sixth  form  at  Eton. 
He  was  particularly  attracted  by  the  works  of  the  great  re- 
storers of  learning.  Once,  while  searching  for  some  apples, 
he  found  a  huge  folio  volume  of  Petrarch's  works.  The 
name  excited  his  curiosity,  and  he  eagerly  devoured  hun- 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  321 

dreds  of  pages.  Indeed,  the  diction  and  versification  of  his 
own  Latin  compositions  show  that  he  had  paid  at  least  as 
much  attention  to  modern  copies  from  the  antique  as  to  the 
original  models. 

While  he  was  thus  irregularly  educating  himself,  his  fam- 
ily was  sinking  into  hopeless  poverty.  Old  Michael  John- 
son was  much  better  qualified  to  pore  upon  books,  and  to 
talk  about  them,  than  to  trade  in  them.  His  business  de- 
clined ;  his  debts  increased ;  it  was  with  difiiculty  that  the 
daily  expenses  of  his  household  were  defrayed.  It  was  out 
of  his  power  to  support  his  son  at  either  university ;  but  a 
wealthy  neighbor  offered  assistance ;  and,  in  reliance  on 
promises  which  proved  to  be  of  very  little  value,  Samuel 
was  entered  at  Pembroke  College,  Oxford.  When  the 
young  scholar  presented  himself  to  the  rulers,  of  that 
society,  they  were  amazed  not  more  by  his  ungainly  figure 
and  eccentric  manners  than  by  the  quantity  of  extensive 
and  curious  information  he  had  picked  up  during  many 
months  of  desultory,  but  not  unprofitable  study.  On  the 
first  day  of  his  residence  he  surprised  his  teachers  by  quot- 
ing Macrobius ;  and  one  of  the  most  learned  among  them 
declared,  that  he  had  never  known  a  freshman  of  equal  at- 
tainments. 

At  Oxford,  Johnson  resided  during  about  three  years. 
He  was  poor,  even  to  raggedness ;  and  his  appearance  ex- 
cited a  mirth  and  a  pity  which  were  equally  intolerable  to 
his  haughty  spirit.  He  was  driven  from  the  quadrangle  of 
Christ  Church  by  the  sneering  looks  which  the  members  of 
that  aristocratical  society  cast  at  the  holes  in  his  shoes. 
Some  charitable  person  placed  a  new  pair  at  his  door  ;  but 
he  spurned  them  away  in  a  fury.  Distress  made  him,  not 
servile,  but  reckless  and  ungovernable.  No  opulent  gentleman 
commoner,  panting  for  one-and-twenty,  could  have  treated 
the  academical  authorities  with  more  gross  disrespect.  The 
needy  scholar  was  generally  to  be  seen  under  the  gate  of 


322  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

Pembroke,  a  gate  now  adorned  with  his  eflSgy,  haranguing  a 
circle  of  lads,  over  whom,  in  spite  of  his  tattered  gown  and 
dirty  linen,  his  wit  and  audacity  gave  him  an  undisputed 
ascendency.  In  every  mutiny  against  the  discipline  of  the 
college  he  was  the  ringleader.  Much  was  pardoned,  how- 
ever, to  a  youth  so  highly  distinguished  by  abilities  and  ac- 
quirements. He  had  early  made  himself  known  by  turning 
Pope's  Messiah  into  Latin  verse.  The  style  and  rhythm, 
indeed,  were  not  exactly  Virgilian ;  but  the  translation 
found  many  admirers,  and  was  read  with  pleasure  by  Pope 
himself. 

The  time  drew  near  at  which  Johnson  would,  in  the  ordi- 
nary course  of  things,  have  become  a  Bachelor  of  Arts  : 
but  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  resources.  Those  promises  of 
support  en  which  he  had  relied  had  not  been  kept.  His 
family  could  do  nothing  for  him.  His  debts  to  Oxford 
tradesmen  were  small  indeed,  yet  larger  than  he  could  pay. 
In  the  autumn  of  1731,  he  was  under  the  necessity  of  quit- 
ting the  university  without  a  degree.  In  the  following  win- 
ter his  father  died.  The  old  man  left  but  a  pittance  ;  and 
of  that  pittance  almost  the  whole  was  appropriated  to  the 
support  of  his  widow.  The  property  to  which  Samuel  suc- 
ceeded amounted  to  no  more  than  twenty  pounds. 

His  life,  during  the  thirty  years  which  followed,  was  one 
hard  struggle  with  poverty.  The  misery  of  that  struggle 
needed  no  aggravation,  but  was  aggravated  by  the  suffering 
of  an  unsound  body  and  an  unsound  mind.  Before  the 
young  man  left  the  university,  his  hereditary  malady  had 
broken  forth  in  a  singularly  cruel  form.  He  had  become 
an  incurable  hypochondriac.  He  said  long  after  that  he  had 
been  mad  all  his  life,  or  at  least  not  perfectly  sane  ;  and,  in 
truth,  eccentricities  less  strange  than  his  have  often  been 
thought  grounds  sufficient  for  absolving  felons,  and  for  set- 
ting aside  wills.  His  grimaces,  his  gestures,  his  mutter- 
ings,  sometimes  diverted  and  sometimes  terrified  people  who 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  323 

did  not  know  him.  At  a  dinner-table  he  would,  in  a  fit  of 
absence,  stoop  down  and  twitch  off  a  lady's  shoe.  He 
would  amaze  a  drawing-room  by  suddenly  ejaculating  a 
clause  of  the  Lord's  Prayer.  He  would  conceive  an  unin- 
telligible aversion  to  a  particular  alley,  and  perform  a  great 
circuit  rather  than  see  the  hateful  place.  He  would  set  his 
heart  on  touching  every  post  in  the  streets  through  which 
he  walked.  If  bjTany  chance  he  missed  a  post,  he  would 
go  back  a  hundred  yards  and  repair  the  omission.  Under 
the  influence  of  his  disease,  his  senses  became  morbidly 
torpid,  and  his  imagination  morbidly  active.  At  one  time 
he  would  stand  poring  on  the  town-clock  without  being 
able  to  tell  the  hour.  At  another,  he  would  distinctly  hear 
his  mother,  who  was  many  miles  off,  calling  him  by  his  name. 
But  this  was  not  the  worst.  A  deep  melan<!holy  took  pos- 
session of  him,  and  gave  a  dark  tinge  to  all  his  views  of 
human  nature  and  of  human  destiny.  Such  wretchedness 
as  he  endured  has  driven  many  men  to  shoot  themselves  or 
drown  themselves.  But  he  was  under  no  temptation  to 
commit  suicide.  He  was  sick  of  life  ;  but  he  was  afraid  of 
death ;  and  he  shuddered  at  every  sight  or  sound  which 
reminded  him  of  the  inevitable  hour.  In  religion  he  found 
but  little  comfort  during  his  long  and  frequent  fits  of  dejec- 
tion ;  for  his  religion  partook  of  his  own  character.  The 
light  from  heaven  shone  on  him  indeed,  but  not  in  a  direct 
line,  or  with  its  own  pure  splendor.  The  rays  had  to 
struggle  through  a  disturbing  medium:  they  reached  him 
refracted,  dulled,  and  discolored  by  the  thick  gloom  which 
had  settled  on  his  soul ;  and,  though  they  might  be  suffi- 
ciently clear  to  guide  him,  were  too  dim  to  cheer  him. 

With  such  infirmities  of  body  and  of  mind,  this  celebrated 
man  was  left,  at  two-and-twenty,  to  fight  his  way  through 
the  world.  He  remained  during  about  five  years  in  the 
midland  counties.  At  Lichfield,  his  birthplace  and  his 
early  home,  he   had  inherited   some  friends  and   acquired 


324  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

others.  He  was  kindly  noticed  by  Henry  Hervey,  a  gay 
officer  of  noble  family,  who  happened  to  be  quartered 
there.  Gilbert  Walmesley,  registrar  of  the  ecclesiastical 
court  of  the  diocese,  a  man  of  distinguished  parts,  learning, 
and  knowledge  of  the  world,  did  himself  honor  by  patron- 
izing the  young  adventurer,  whose  repulsive  person,  unpol- 
ished manners,  and  squalid  garb,  moved  many  of  the  petty 
aristocracy  of  the  neighborhood  to  laughter  or  to  disgust. 
At  Lichfield,  however,  Johnson  could  find  no  way  of  earn- 
ing a  livelihood.  He  became  usher  of  a  grammar-school  in 
Leicestershire ;  he  resided  as  a  humble  companion  in  the 
house  of  a  country  gentleman  ;  but  a  life  of  dependence  was 
insupportable  to  his  haughty  spirit.  He  repaired  to  Bir- 
mingham, and  there  earned  a  few  guineas  by  literary  drudg- 
ery. In  that  fown  he  printed  a  translation,  little  noticed  at 
the  time,  and  long  forgotten,  of  a  Latin  book  about  Abys- 
sinia. He  then  put  forth  proposals  for  publishing  by  sub- 
scription the  poems  of  Politian,  with  notes  containing  a  his- 
tory of  modern  Latin  verse ;  but  subscriptions  did  not  come 
in  ;  and  the  volume  never  appeared. 

While  leading  this  vagrant  and  miserable  life,  Johnson 
fell  in  love.  The  object  of  his  passion  was  Mrs.  Elizabeth 
Porter,  a  widow  who  had  children  as  old  as  himself.  To 
ordinary  spectators,  the  lady  appeared  to  be  a  short,  fat, 
coarse  woman,  painted  half  an  inch  thick,  dressed  in  gaudy 
colors,  and  fond  of  exhibiting  provincial  airs  and  graces 
which  were  not  exactly  those  of  the  Queensberrys  and 
Lepels.  To  Johnson,  however,  whose  passions  were  strong, 
whose  eyesight  was  too  weak  to  distinguish  ceruse  from 
natural  bloom,  and  who  had  seldom  or  never  been  in  the 
same  room  with  a  woman  of  real  fashion,  his  Titty,  as  he 
called  her,  was  the  most  beautiful,  graceful,  and  accom- 
plished of  her  sex.  That  his  admiration  was  unfeigned  can- 
not be  doubted ;  for  she  was  as  poor  as  himself.  She  ac- 
cepted, with  a  readiness  which  did  her  little  honor,  the  ad- 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  325 

dresses  of  a  suitor  who  might  have  been  her  son.  The 
marriage,  however,  in  spite  of  occasional  wranglings,  proved 
happier  than  might  have  been  expected.  The  lover  con- 
tinued to  be  under  the  illusions  of  the  wedding  day  till 
the  lady  died  in  her  sixty-fourth  year.  On  her  monu- 
ment he  placed  an  inscription,  extolling  the  charms  of  her 
person  and  of  her  manners ;  and  when,  long  after  her  de- 
cease, he  had  occasion  to  mention  her,  he  exclaimed,  with  a 
tenderness  half  ludicrous,  half  pathetic,  "  Pretty  creature ! " 

His  marriage  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  exert  himself 
more  strenuously  than  he  had  hitherto  done.  He  took  a 
house  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  native  town,  and  adver- 
tised for  pupils.  But  eighteen  months  passed  away ;  and 
only  three  pupils  came  to  his  academy.  Indeed,  his  ap- 
pearance was  so  strange,  and  his  temper  so  violent,  that  his 
school-room  must  have  resembled  an  ogre's  den.  Nor  was 
the  tawdry  painted  grandmother  whom  he  called  his  Titty 
well  qualified  to  make  provision  for  the  comfort  of  young 
gentlemen.  David  Garrick,  who  was  one  of  the  pupils, 
used,  many  years  later,  to  throw  the  best  company  of  London 
into  convulsions  of  laughter  by  mimicking  the  endearments 
of  this  extraordinary  pair. 

At  length  Johnson,  in  the  twenty-eighth  year  of  his  age, 
determined  to  seek  his  fortune  in  the  capital  as  a  literary 
adventurer.  He  set  out  with  a  few  guineas,  three  acts  of 
the  tragedy  of  Irene  in  manuscript,  and  two  or  three  letters 
of  introduction  from  his  friend  Walmesley. 

Never  since  literature  became  a  calling  in  England  had  it 
been  a  less  gainful  calling  than  at  the  time  when  Johnson 
took  up  his  residence  in  London.  In  the  preceding  gen- 
eration a  writer  of  eminent  merit  was  sure  to  be  munificently 
rewarded  by  the  government.  The  least  that  he  could  ex- 
pect was  a  pension  or  a  sinecure  place ;  and  if  he  showed 
any  aptitude  for  politics,  he  might  hope  to  be  a  member  of 
parliament,  a  lord  of  the  treasury,  an  embassador,  a  secre- 
28 


326  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

tary  of  state.  It  would  be  easy,  on  the  other  hand,  to  name 
several  writers  of  the  nineteenth  century  of  whom  the  least 
successful  has  received  forty  thousand  pounds  from  the 
booksellers.  But  Johnson  entered  on  his  vocation  in  the 
most  dreary  part  of  the  dreary  interval  which  separated  two 
ages  of  prosperity.  Literature  had  ceased  to  flourish  under 
the  patronage  of  the  great,  and  had  not  begun  to  flourish 
under  the  patronage  of  the  public.  One  man  of  lett-ers,  in- 
deed, Pope,  had  acquired  by  his  pen  what  was  then  considered 
as  a  handsome  fortune,  and  lived  on  a  footing  of  equality  with 
nobles  and  ministers  of  state.  But  this  was  a  solitary  ex- 
ception. Even  an  author  whose  reputation  was  established, 
and  whose  works  were  popular,  such  an  author  as  Thomson, 
W'hose  Seasons  were  in  every  library,  such  an  author  as 
Fielding,  whose  Pasquin  had  had  a  greater  run  than  any 
drama  since  The  Beggar's  Opera,  was  sometimes  glad  to 
obtain,  by  pawning  his  best  coat,  the  means  of  dining  on 
tripe  at  a  cook-shop  underground,  where  he  could  wipe  his 
hands,  after  his  greasy  meal,  on  the  back  of  a  Newfound- 
land dog.  It  is  easy,  therefore,  to  imagine  what  humil- 
iations and  privations  must  have  awaited  the  novice  who 
had  still  to  earn  a  name.  One  of  the  publishers  to  whom 
Johnson  applied  for  employment  measured  with  a  scornful 
eye  that  athletic  though  uncouth  frame,  and  exclaimed, 
"You  had  better  get  a  porter's  knot,  and  «arry  trunks." 
Nor  was  the  advice  bad,  for  a  porter  was  likely  to  be  as 
plentifully  fed,  and  as  comfortably  lodged,  as  a  poet. 

Some  time  appears  to  have  elapsed  before  Johnson  was 
able  to  form  any  literary  connection  from  which  he  could 
expect  more  than  bread  for  the  day  which  was  passing  over 
him.  He  never  forgot  the  genex'osity  with  which  Hervey, 
who  was  now  residing  in  London,  relieved  his  wants  during 
this  time  of  trial.  "  Harry  Hervey,"  said  the  old  philos- 
opher many  years  later,  "  was  a  vicious  man ;  but  he  was 
very  kind  to  me.     If  you  call  a  dog  Hervey,  I  shall  love 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  827 

him."  At  Hervey's  table  Johnson  sometimes  enjoyed 
feasts  which  were' made  more  agreeable  by  contrast.  But 
in  general  he  dined,  and  thought  that  he  dined  well  on  six- 
penny worth  of  meat  and  a  penny  worth  of  bread  at  an  ale- 
house near  Drury  Lane. 

The  effect  of  the  privations  and  sufferings  wfiich  he  en- 
dured at  this  time  was  discernible  to  the  last  in  his  temper 
and  his  deportment.  His  manners  had  never  been  courtly. 
They  now  became  almost  savage.  Being  frequently  under 
the  necessity  of  wearing  shabby  coats  and  dirty  shirts,  he 
became  a  confirmed  sloven.  Being  often  very  hungry  when 
he  ,sate  down  to  his  meals,  he  contracted  a  habit  of  eating 
with  ravenous  greediness.  Even  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and 
even  at  the  tables  of  the  great,  the  sight  of  food  affected  him 
as  it  ^ects  wild  beasts  and  birds  of  prey.  His  taste  in 
cookery,  formed  in  subterranean  ordinaries  and  Alamode 
beefshops,  was  far  from  delicate.  Whenever  he  was  so  for- 
tunate as  to  have  near  him  a  hare  that  had  been  kept  too 
long,  or  a  meat  pie  made  with  rancid  butter,  he  gorged  him- 
self with  such  violence  that  his  veins  swelled,  and  the  moist- 
ure broke  out  on  his  forehead.  The  affronts  which  his 
poverty  emboldened  stupid  and  low-minded  men  to  offer  ta 
him  would  have  broken  a  mean  spirit  into  sycophancy,  but 
made  him  rude  even  to  ferocity.  Unhappily  the  insolence 
which,  while  it  was  defensive  was  pardonable,  and  in  some 
sense  respectable,  accompanied  him  into  societies  where  he 
was  treated  with  courtesy  and  kindness.  He  was  repeat- 
edly provoked  into  striking  those  who  had  taken  liberties 
with  him.  All  the  sufferers,  however,  were  wise  enough  to 
abstain  from  talking  about  their  beatings,  except  Osborne, 
the  most  rapacious  and  brutal  of  booksellers,  who  pro- 
claimed everywhere  that  he  had  been  knocked  down  by 
the  huge  fellow  whom  he  had  hired  to  puff  the  Harleian 
Library. 

About  a   year   after  Johnson   had   begun   to   reside   in 


328  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

London,  he  was  fortunate  enough  to  obtain  regular  employ- 
ment from  Cave,  an  enterprising  and  intelligent  bookseller, 
who  was  proprietor  and  editor  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine. 
That  journal,  just  entering  on  the  ninth  year  of  its  long 
existence,  was  the  only  periodical  work  in  the  kingdom 
which  then  "had  what  would  now  be  called  a  large  circula- 
tion. It  was,  indeed,  the  .chief  source  of  parliamentary 
intelligence.  It  was  not  then  safe,  even  during  a  recess,  to 
publish  an  account  of  the  proceedings  of  either  House  with- 
out some  disguise.  Cave,  however,  ventured  to  entertain 
his  readers  with  what  he  called  Reports  of  the  Debates  of 
the  Senate  of  Lilliput.  France  was  Blefuscu  ;  London  was 
Mildendo ;  pounds  were  sprugs  ;  the  Duke  of  Newcastle 
was  the  Nardac  secretary  of  state;  Lord  Hardwicke  was 
the  Hurgo  Hicrad;  and  William  Pulteney  was  Wjngul 
Pulnub.  To  write  the  speeches  was,  during  several  years, 
the  business  of  Johnson.  He  was  generally  furnished  with 
notes,  meagre  indeed,  and  inaccurate,  of  what  had  been  said ; 
but  sometimes  he  had  to  find  arguments  and  eloquence  both 
for  the  ministry  and  for  the  opposition.  He  was  himself  a 
Tory,  not  from  i-ational  conviction  —  for  his  serious  opinion 
Fas  that  one  form  of  government  was  just  as  good  or  as  bad 
as  another  —  but  from  mere  passion,  such  as  inflamed  the 
Capulets  against  the  Montagues,  or  the  Blues  of  the  Roman 
circus  against  the  Greens,  In  his  infancy  he  had  heard  so 
much  talk  about  the  villainies  of  the  Whigs,  and  the  dangers 
of  the  Church,  that  he  had  become  a  furious  partisan  when 
he  could  scarcely  ppeak.  Before  he  was  three  he  had  in- 
sisted on  being  taken  to  hear  Sacheverel  preach  at  Lichfield 
cathedral,  and  had  listened  to  the  sermon  with  as  much 
respect,  and  probably  with  as  much  intelligence,  as  any 
Staffordshire  squire  in  the  congregation.  The  work  which 
had  been  begun  in  the  nursery  had  been  completed  by  the 
university.  Oxford,  when  Johnson  resided  there,  was  the 
most  Jacobitical  place  in  England ;  and  Pembroke  was  one 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  329 

of  the  most  Jacobitical  colleges  in  Oxford.  The  prejudices 
which  he  brought  up  to  London  were  scarcely  less  absurd 
than  those  of  his  own  Tom  Tempest.  Charles  II.  and 
James  II.  were  two  of  the  best  kings  that  ever  reigned. 
Laud  —  a  poor  creatore  who  never  did,  said,  or  wrote  any 
thing  indicating  more  than  the  ordinary  capacity  of  an  old 
woman  —  was  a  prodigy  of  parts  and  learning,  over  whose 
tomb  Art  and  Genius  still  continued  to  weep.  Hampden 
deserved  no  more  honorable  name  than  that  of  "  the  zealot 
of  rebellion."  Even  the  ship-money,  condemned  not  less 
decidedly  by  Falkland  and  Clarendon  than  by  the  bitterest 
Roundheads,  Johnson  would  not  pronounce  to  have  been  an 
unconstitutional  impost.  Under  a  government  the  mildest 
that  had  ever  been  known  in  the  world  —  under  a  govern- 
ment which  allowed  to  the  people  an  unprecedented  liberty 
of  speech  and  action  —  he  fancied  that  he  was  a  slave ;  he 
assailed  the  ministry  with  obloquy  which  refuted  itself,  and 
regretted  the  lost  freedom  and  happiness  iif^  those  golden 
days  in  which  a  writer  who  had  taken  but  one  tenth  part  of 
the  license  allowed  to  him  would  have  been  pilloried,  man- 
gled with  the  shears,  whipped  at  the  cart's-tail,  and  flung 
into  a  noisome  dungeon  to  die.  He  hated  dissenters  and 
stockjobbers,  the  excise  and  the  army,  septennial  parlia- 
ments and  continental  connections.  He  long  had  an  aver- 
sion to  the  Scotch  —  an  aversion  of  which  he  could  not 
remember  the  commencement,  but  which,  he  owned,  had 
probably  originated  in  his  abhorrence  of  the  conduct  of  the 
nation  during  the  Great  Rebellion.  It  is  easy  to  guess  in 
what  manner  debates  on  great  party  questions  were  likely 
to  be  reported  by  a  man  whose  judgment  was  so  much  dis- 
ordered by  party  spirit.  A  show  of  fairness  was  indeed 
necessary  to  the  prosperity  of  the  Magazine  ;  but  Johnson 
long  afterward  owned  that,  though  he  had  saved  appearances, 
he  had  taken  care  that  the  Whig  dogs  should  not  have  the 
best  of  it ;  and,  in  fact,  every  passage  which  has  lived  — 
28* 


330  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

every  passage  which  bears  the  marks  of  his  higher  facul- 
ties —  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  some  member  of  the  op- 
position. 

A  few  weeks  after  Johnson  had  entered  on  these  obscure 
labors,  he  published  a  work  which  at  qpce  placed  him  high 
among  the  writers  of  his  age.  It  is  probable  that  what  he  had 
suffered  during  his  first  year  in  London,  had  often  reminded 
him  of  some  parts  of  that  noble  poem  in  which  Juvenal  had 
described  the  misery  and  degradation  of  a  needy  man  of  let- 
ters, lodged  among  the  pigeons'  nests  in  the  tottering  gar- 
rets which  overhung  the  streets  of  Rome.  Pope's  admirable 
imitations  of  Horace's  Satires  and  Epistles  had  recently  ap- 
peared, were  in  every  hand,  and  were  by  many  readers 
thought  superior  to  the  originals.  "What  Pope  had  done  for 
Horace,  Johnson  aspired  to  do  for  Juvenal.  The  enterprise 
was  bold,  and  yet  judicious.  For  between  Johnson  and 
Juvenal  there  was  much  in  common  —  much  more,  certainly, 
than  between  ^pe  and  Horace. 

Johnson's  London  appeared  without  his  name  in  May, 
1738.  He  received  only  ten  guineas  for  this  stately  and 
vigorous  poem  ;  but  the  sale  was  rapid  and  the  success  com- 
plete. A  second  edition  was  required  within  a  week.  Those 
small  critics  who  are  always  desirous  to  lower  established 
re})utations  ran  about  proclaiming  that  the  anonymous  sati- 
rist was  superior  to  Pope  in  Pope's  own  peculiar  department 
of  literature.  It  ought  to  be  remembered,  to  the  honor  of 
Pope,  that  he  joined  heartily  in  the  applause  with  which  the 
appearance  of  a  rival  genius  was  welcomed.  He  made  in- 
quiries about  the  author  of  London.  Such  a  man,  he  said, 
could  not  long  be  concealed.  The  name  was  soon  discov- 
ered ;  and  Pope,  with  great  kindness,  exerted  himself  to 
obtain^  academical  degree  and  the  mastership  of  a  gram- 
mar-school for  the  poor  young  poet.  The  attempt  failed, 
and  Johnson  remained  a  bookseller's  hack. 

It  does  not  appear  that  these  two  men  —  the  most  emi- 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  331 

nent  writer  of  the  generation  which  was  going  out,  and  the 
most  eminent  writer  of  the  generation  which  was  coming  in 
—  ever  saw  each  other.  They  Hved  in  very  different  cir- 
cles —  one  surrounded  by  dukes  and  earls,  the  other  by 
starting  pamphleteers  and  index-makers.  Among  Johnson's 
associates  at  this  time  may  be  mentioned  Boyse,  who,  when 
his  shirts  were  pledged,  scrawled  Latin  verses  sitting  up  in 
bed  with  his  arms  through  two  holes  in  his  blanket,  who 
composed  very  respectable  sacred  poetry  when  he  was  sober, 
and  who  was  at  last  run  over  by  a  hackney-coach  when  he 
was  drunk ;  Hoole,  surnamed  the  metaphysical  tailor,  who, 
instead  of  attending  to  his  measures,  used  to  trace  geometri- 
cal diagrams  on  the  board  where  he  sate  cross-legged  ;  and 
the  penitent  impostor,  George  Psalmanazar,  who,  after  poring 
all  day,  in  an  humble  lodging,  on  the  folios  of  Jewish  rabbis 
and  the  Christian  fathers,  indulged  himself  at  night  with 
literary  and  theological  conversation  at  an  alehouse  in  the 
city.  But  the  most  remarkable  of  the  perspns  with  whom 
at  this  time  Johnson  consorted,  was  Richard  Savage,  an 
earl's  son,  a  shoemaker's  apprentice,  and  had  seen  life  in  all 
its  forms,  —  who  had  feasted  among  blue  ribbons  in  Saint 
James's  Square,  and  had  lain  with  fifty  pounds'  weight  of 
irons  on  his  legs  in  the  condemned  ward  of  Newgate.  This 
man  had,  after  many  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  sunk  at  last  into 
abject  and  hopeless  poverty.  His  pen  had  failed  him.  His 
patrons  had  been  taken  away  by  death,  or  estranged  by  the 
riotous  profusion  with  which  he  squandered  their  bounty, 
and  the  ungrateful  insolence  with  which  he  rejected  their 
advice.  He  now  lived  by  begging.  He  dined  on  venison 
and  champagne  whenever  he  had  been  so  fortunate  as  to 
borrow  a  guinea.  If  his  questing  had  been  unsuccessful, 
he  appeased  the  rage  of  hunger  with  some  scraps  of  broken 
meat,  and  lay  down  to  rest  under  the  piazza  of  Covent 
Garden  in  warm  weather,  and,  in  cold  weather,  as  near  as 
he  could  get  to  the  furnace  of  a  glass-house.     Yet,  in  his 


332  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

misery,  he  was  still  an  agreeable  companion.  He  had  an 
inexhaustible  store  of  anecdotes  about  that  gay  and  brilliant 
wgrld  from  which  he  was  now  an  outcast.  He  had  observed 
the  great  men  of  both  parties  in  hours  of  careless  relaxa- 
tion, had  seen  the  leaders  of  opposition  without  the  masW  of 
patriotism,  and  had  heard  the  prime  minister  roar  with 
laughter  and  tell  stories  not  over  decent.  During  some 
months  Savage  lived  in  the  closest  familiarity  with  Johnson ; 
and  then  the  friends  parted,  not  without  tears.  Johnson 
remained  in  London  to  drudge  for  Cave,  Savage  went  to 
the  west  of  England,  lived  there  as  he  had  lived  every- 
where, and,  in  1743,  died,  penniless  and  heart-broken,  in 
Bristol  jail. 

Soon  after  his  death,  while  the  public  curiosity  was  strongly 
excited  about  his  extraordinary  character,  and  his  not  less 
extraordinary  adventures,  a  life  of  him  appeared  widely 
different  from  the  catchpenny  lives  of  eminent  men  which 
were  then  a  st^le  article  of  manufacture  in  Grub  Street. 
The  style  was  indeed  deficient  in  ease  and  variety ;  and  the 
writer  was  evidently  too  partial  to  the  Latin  element  of  our 
language.  But  the  little  work  with  all  its  faults  was  a  mas- 
terpiece. No  finer  specimen  of  literary  biography  existed 
in  any  language,  living  or  dead ;  and  a  discerning  critic 
might  have  confidently  predicted  that  the  author  was  des- 
tined to  be  the  founder  of  a  new  school  of  English  elo- 
quence. 

The  Life  of  Savage  was  anonymous ;  but  it  was  well 
known  in  literary  circles  that  Johnson  was  the  writer.  Dur- 
ing the  three  years  which  followed,  he  produced  no  impor- 
tant work ;  but  he  was  not,  and  indeed  could  not  be,  idle. 
The  fame  of  his  abilities  and  learning  continued  to  grow. 
Warburton  pronounced  him  a  man  of  parts  and  genius ; 
and  the  praise  of  Warburton  was  then  no  light  thing.  Such 
was  Johnson's  reputation  that,  in  1747,  several  eminent 
booksellers  combined  to  employ  him  in  the  arduous  work  of 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  333 

preparing  a  Dictionary  of  the  English  Langtcoffe,  in  two 
folio  volumes.  The  sum  which  they  agreed  to  pay  him  was 
only  fifteen  hundred  guineas ;  and  out  of  this  sum  he  had  to 
pay  several  poor  men  of  letters  who  assisted  him  in  the 
humbler  parts  of  his  task. 

The  Prospectus  of  the  Dictionary  he  addressed  to  the 
Earl  of  Chestierfield.  Chesterfield  had  long  been  celebrated 
for  the  politeness  of  his  manners,  the  brilliancy  of  his  wit, 
and  the  delicacy  of  his  taste.  He  was  acknowledged  to  be 
the  finest  speaker  in  the  House  of  Lords.  He  had  recently 
governed  Ireland,,  at  a  momentous  conjuncture,  with  emi- 
nent firmness,  wisdom,  and  humanity  ;  and  he  had  since  be- 
come Secretary  of  State.  He  received  Johnson's  homage 
with  the  most  winning  affability,  and  requited  it  with  a  few 
guineas,  bestowed  doubtless  in  a  very  graceful  manner,  but 
was  by  no  means  desirous  to  see  all  his  carpets  blackened 
with  the  London  mud,  and  his  soups  and  wines  thrown  to 
right  and  left  over  the  gowns  of  fine  ladies  and  the  waist- 
coats of  fine  gentlemen,  by  an  absent,  awkward  scholar,  who 
gave  strange  starts  and  uttered  strange  growls,  who  dressed 
like  a  scarecrow,  and  ate  like  a  cormorant.  During  some 
time  Johnson  continued  to  call  on  his  patron,  but  after  being 
repeatedly  told  by  the  porter  that  his  lordship  was  not  at 
home,  took  the  hint,  and  ceased  to  present  himself  at  the  in- 
hospitable door. 

Johnson  had  flattered  himself  that  he  should  have  completed 
his  Dictionary  by  the  end  of  1750,  but  it  was  not  till  1755 
that  he  at  length  gave  his  huge  volumes  to  the  world. 
During  the  seven  years  which  he  passed  in  the  drudgery 
of  penning  definitions  and  marking  quotations  for  transcrip- 
tion, he  sought  for  relaxation  in  literary  labor  of  a  more 
agreeable  kind.  In  1749  he  published  the  Vanity  of  Human 
Wishes,  an  excellent  imitation  of  the  Tenth  Satire  of  Juve- 
nal. It  is  in  truth  not  easy  to  say  whether  the  palm  belongs 
to  the  ancient  or  to  the  modern  poet.     The  couplets  in  which 


334  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

the  fall  of  Wolsey  is  described,  though  lofty  and  sonorous, 
are  feeble  when  compared  with  the  wonderful  lines  which 
bring  before  us  all  Rome  in  tumult  on  the  day  of  the  fall  of 
Sejanus,  the  laurels  on  the  door-posts,  the  white  bull  stalk- 
ing toward  the  Capitol,  the  statues  rolling  down  from  their 
pedestals,  the  flatterers  of  the  disgraced  minister  running  to 
see  him  dragged  with  a  hook  through  the  streets,  and  to 
have  a  kick  at  his  carcass  before  it  is  hurled  into  the  Tiber. 
It  must  be  owned,  too,  that  in  the  concluding  passage  the 
Christian  moralist  has  not  made  the  most  of  his  advantages, 
and  has  fallen  decidedly  short  of  the  sublimity  of  his  pagan 
model.  On  the  other  hand,  Juvenal's  Hannibal  must  yield 
to  Johnson's  Charles ;  and  Johnson's  vigorous  and  pathetic 
enumeration  of  the  miseries  of  a  literary  life  must  be  allowed 
to  be  superior  to  Juvenal's  lamentation  over  the  fate  of  De- 
mosthenes and  Cicero. 

For  the  copyright  of  the  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes  John- 
son received  only  fifteen  guineas. 

A  few  days  after  the  publication  of  this  poem,  his  tragedy, 
begun  many  years  before,  was  brought  on  the  stage.  His 
pupil,  David  Garrick,  had,  in  1741,  made  his  appearance  on 
a  humble  stage  in  Goodman's  Fields,  had  at  once  risen  to 
the  first  place  among  actors,  and  was  now,  after  several 
years  of  almost  uninteiTupted  success,  manager  of  Drury 
Lane  Theatre.  The  relation  between  him  and  his  old  pre- 
ceptor was  of  a  very  singular  kind.  They  repelled  each 
other  strongly,  and  yet  attracted  each  other  strongly.  Na- 
ture had  made  them  of  very  different  clay ;  and  circum- 
stances had  fully  brought  out  the  natural  peculiarities  of  both. 
Sudden  prosperity  had  turned  Garrick's  head.  Continued 
adversity  had  soured  Johnson's  temper.  Johnson  saw  with 
more  envy  than  became  so  great  a  man  the  villa,  the  plate, 
the  china,  the  Brussels  carpet,  which  the  little  mimic  had 
got  by  repeating,  with  grimaces  and  gesticulations,  what 
wiser  men  had  written  ;  and  the  exquisitely  sensitive  van-  ■ 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  335 

ity  of  Garrick  was  galled  by  the  thought  that,  while  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  was  applauding  him,  he  could  obtain  from 
one  morose  cynic,  whose  opinion  it  was  impossible  to  de- 
spise, scarcely  any  compliment  not  acidulated  with  scorn. 
Yet  the  two  Lichfield  men  had  so  many  early  recollections 
in  common,  and  sympathized  with  each  other  on  so  many 
points  on  which  they  sympathized  with  nobody  else  in  the 
vast  population  of  the  capital,  that,  though  the  master  was 
often  provoked  by  the  monkey-like  impertinence  of  the  pu- 
pil, and  the  pupil  by  the  bearish  rudeness  of  the  master,  they 
remained  friends  till  they  were  parted  by  death.  Garrick 
now  brought  Irene  out,  with  alterations  sufficient  to  displease 
the  author,  yet  not  sufficient  to  make  the  piece  pleasing  to 
the  audience.  The  public,  however,  listened,  |vith  little 
emotion,  but  with  much  civility,  to  five  acts  of  monotonous 
declamation.  After  nine  representations  the  play  was  with- 
drawn. It  is,  indeed,  altogether  unsuited  to  the  stage,  and, 
eve/i  when  perused  in  the  closet,  will  be  found  hardly  wor- 
thy of  the  author.  He  had  not  the  slightest  notion  of  what 
blank  verse  should  be.  A  change  in  the  last  syllable  of 
every  other  line  would  make  the  versification  of  the  Vanity 
of  Human  Wishes  closely  resemble  the  versification  of 
Irene.  The  poet,  however,  cleared,  by  his  benefit  nights, 
and  by  the  sale  of  the  copyright  of  his  tragedy,  about  three 
hundred  pounds,  then  a  great  sum  in  his  estimation. 

About  a  year  after  the  representation  of  Irene,  he  began 
to  publish  a  series  of  short  essays  on  morals,  manners,  and 
literature.  This  species  of  composition  had  been  brought 
into  fashion  by  the  success  of  the  Tatler,  and  by  the  still 
more  brilliant  success  of  the  Spectator.  A  crowd  of  small 
writers  had  vainly  attempted  to  rival  Addison.  The  Lay 
Monastery,  the  Censor,  the  Freethinker,  the  Plain  Dealef, 
the  Champion,  and  other  works  of  the  same  kind,  had  had 
their  short  day.  None  of  them  had  obtained  a  permanent 
place  in  our  literature ;  and  they  are  now  to  be  found  only 


336  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

in  the  libraries  of  the  curious.  At  length  Johnson  under- 
took the  adventure  in  which  so  many  aspirants  had  failed. 
In  the  thirty-sixth  year  after  the  appearance  of  the  last 
number  of  the  Spectator  appeared  the  first  number  of  the 
Rambler.  From  March  1750  to  March  1752,  this  paper 
continued  to  come  out  every  Tuesday  and  Saturday. 

From  the  first,  the  Rambler  was  enthusiastically  admired 
by  a  few  eminent  men.  Richardson,  when  only  five  num- 
bers had  appeared,  pronounced  it  equal,  if  not  superior,  to 
the  Spectator.  Young  and  Hartley  expressed  their  appro- 
bation not  less  warmly.  Bubb  Dodington,  among  whose 
many  faults  indifference  to  the  claims  of  genius  and  learn- 
ing cannot  be  reckoned,  solicited  the  acquaintance  of  the 
writer.  In  consequence  probably  of  the  good  offices  of 
Dodington,  who  was  then  the  confidential  adviser  of  Prince 
Frederic,  two  of  his  Royal  Highness's  gentlemen  carried  a 
gracious  message  to  the  printing-office,  and  ordered  seven 
copies  for  Leicester  house.  But  these  overtures  seem  to 
have  been  very  coldly  received.  Johnson  had  had  enough 
of  the  patronage  of  the  great  to  last  him  all  his  life,  and 
was  not  disposed  to  haunt  any  other  door  as  he  had  haunted 
the  door  of  Chesterfield. 

By  the  public  the  Rambler  was  at  first  very  coldly-  re- 
ceived. Though  the  price  of  a  number  was  only  twopence, 
the  sale  did  not  amount  to  five  hundred.  The  profits  were 
therefore  very  small.  But  as  soon  as  the  flying  leaves  were 
collected  and  reprinted,  they  became  popular.  The  author 
lived  to  see  thirteen  thousand  copies  spread  over  England 
alone.  Separate  editions  were  published  for  the  Scotch 
and  Irish  markets.  A  large  party  pronounced  the  style  per- 
fect, so  absolutely  perfect  that  in  some  essays  it  would  be 
impossible  for  the  writer  himself  to  alter  a  single  word  for 
the  better.  Another  party,  not  less  numerous,  vehemently 
accused  him  of  having  corrupted  the  purity  of  the  English 
tongue.     The  best  critics  admitted  that  his  diction  was  too 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  337 

monotonous,  too  obviously  artificial,  and  now  and  then  tur- 
gid even  to  absurdity.  But  they  did  justice  to  the  acuteness 
of  his  observations  on  morals  and  manners,  to  the  constant 
precision  and  frequent  brilliancy  of  his  language,  to  the 
weighty  and  magnificent  eloquence  of  many  serious  pas- 
sages, and  to  the  solemn  yet  pleasing  humor  of  some  of  the 
lighter  papers.  On  the  question  of  precedence  between 
Addison  and  Johnson,  a  question  which,  seventy  years  ago, 
was  much  disputed,  posterity  has  pronounced  a  decision 
from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  Sir  Roger,  his  chaplain  and 
his  butler.  Will  Wimble  and  Will  Honeycomb,  the  Vision 
of  Mirza,  the  Journal  of  the  Retired  Citizen,  the  Everlast- 
ing Club,  the  Dunmow  Flitch,  the  Loves  of  Hilpah  and 
Shalum,  the  Visit  to  the  Exchange,  and  the  Visit  to  the 
Abbey  are  known  to  everybody.  But  many  men  and 
women,  even  of  highly  cultivated  minds,  are  unacquainted 
with  Squire  Bluster  and  Mrs.  Busy,  Quisquilius  and  Ve- 
nustulus,  the  Allegory  of  Wit  and  Learning,  the  Clironicle 
of  the  Revolutions  of  a  Garret,  and  the  sad  fate  of  Anin- 
gait  and  Ajut. 

The  last  RamUer  was  written  in  a  sad  and  gloomy  hour. 
Mrs.  Johnson  had  been  given  over  by  the  physician.  Three 
days  later  she  died.  She  left  her  husband  almost  broken- 
hearted. Many  people  had  been  surprised  to  see  a  man  of 
his  genius  and  learning,  stooping  to  every  drudgery,  and 
denying  himself  almost  every  comfort,  for  the  purpose  of 
supplying  a  silly,  affected  'old  woman  with  superfluities, 
which  she  accepted  with  but  little  gratitude.  But  all  his 
affection  had  been  concentrated  on  her.  He  had  neither 
brother  nor  sister,  neither  son  nor  daughter.  To  him  she 
was  beautiful  as  the  Gunnings,  and  witty  as  Lady  Mary. 
Her  opinion  of  his  writings  was  more  important  to  him 
than  the  voice  of  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  or  the 
judgment   of   the    Monthly    Review.      The    chief   support 

29 


338  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

which  had  sustained  him  through  the  most  arduous  labor  of 
his  life,  was  the  hope  that  she  would  enjoy  the  fame  and  the 
profit  which  he  anticipated  from  his  Dictionary.  She  was 
gone ;  and,  in  that  vast  labyrinth  of  streets,  peopled  by 
eight  hundred  thousand  human  beings,- he  was  alone.  Yet 
it  was  necessary  for  him  to  set  himsel^'as  he  expressed  it, 
doggedly  to  work.  After  three  more  laborious  years,  the 
Dictionary  was  at  length  complete. 

It  had  been  generally  supposed  that  this  great  work 
would  be  dedicated  to  the  eloquent  and  accomplished  noble- 
man to  whom  the  Prospectus  had  been  addressed.  He  well 
knew  the  value  of  such  a  compliment;  and  therefore,  when 
the  day  of  publication  drew  near,  he  exerted  himself  to 
soothe,  by  a  show  of  zealous  and  at  the  same  time  of  deli- 
cate and  judicious  kindness,  the  pride  which  he  had  so 
cruelly  wounded.  Since  the  Rambler  had  ceased  to  appear, 
the  town  had  been  entertained  by  a  journal  called  The 
World,  to  which  many  men  of  high  rank  and  fashion  con- 
tributed. In  two  successive  numbers  of  the  World,  the 
Dictionary  was,  to  use  the  modern  phrase,  puffed  with  won- 
derful skill.  The  writings  of  Johnson  were  warmly  praised. 
It  was  proposed  that  he  should  be  invested  with  the  author- 
ity of  a  Dictator,  nay,  of  a  Pope,  over  our  language,  and 
that  his  decisions  about  the  meaning  and  the  spelling  of 
words  should  be  received  as  final.  His  two  folios,  it  was 
said,  would  of  course  be  bought  by  everybody  who  could 
afford  to  buy  them.  It  was  soon  known  that  these  papers 
were  written  by  Chesterfield.  But  the  just  resentment  of 
Johnson  was  not  to  be  so  appeased.  In  a  letter  written 
with  singular  energy  and  dignity  of  thought  and  language, 
he  repelled  the  tardy  advances  of  his  patron.  The  Dic- 
tionary came  forth  without  a  dedication.  In  the  preface  the 
author  truly  declared  that  he  owed  nothing  to  the  great,  and 
described  the   difficulties  with  which  he  had  been  left  to 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  339 

Struggle  so  forcibly  and  pathetically,  that  the  ablest  ^nd 
most  malevolent  of  all  the  enemies  of  his  fame,  Home 
Tooke,  never  could  read  that  passage  without  tears. 

The  public,  on  this  occasion,  did  Johnson  full  justice,  and 
something  more  than  justice.  The  best  lexicographer  may 
well  be  content,  if  his  productions  are  received  by  the  world 
with  cold  esteem.  But  Johnson's  Dictionary  was  hailed 
with  an  enthusiasm  such  as  no  similar  work  has  ever  ex- 
cited. It  was  indeed  the  first  dictionary  which  could  be 
read  with  pleasure.  The  definitions  show  so  much  acute- 
ness  of  thought  and  command  of  language,  and  the  passages 
quoted  from  poets,  divines,  and  philosophers,  are  so  skil- 
fully selected,  that  a  leisure  hour  may  always  be  very  agree- 
ably spent  in  turning  over  the  pages.  The  faults  of  the 
book  resolve  themselves,  for  the  most  part,  into  one  great 
fault.  Johnson  was  a  wretched  etymologist.  He  knew 
little  or  nothing  of  any  Teutonic  language  except  English, 
which,  indeed,  as  he  wrote  it,  was  scarcely  a  Teutonic  lan- 
guage ;  and  thus  he  was  absolutely  at  the  mercy  of  Junius 
and  Skinner. 

The  Dictionary,  though  it  raised  Johnson's  fame,  added 
nothing  to  his  pecuniary  means.  The  fifteen  hundred 
guineas  which  the  booksellers  had  agreed  to  pay  him,  had 
been  advanced  and  spent  before  the  last  sheets  issued  from 
the  press.  It  is  painful  to  relate  that,  twice  in  the  course 
of  the  year  which  followed  the  publication  of  this  great 
work,  he  was  arrested  and  carried  to  spunging-houses,  and 
that  he  was  twice  indebted  for  his  liberty  to  his  excellent 
friend  Richardson.  It  was  still  necessary  for  the  man  who 
had  been  formally  saluted  by  the  highest  authority  as  Dic- 
tator of  the  English  language  to  supply  his  wants  by  con- 
stant toil.  He  abridged  his  Dictionary.  He  proposed  to 
bring  out  an  edition  of  Shakspeare  by  subscription ;  and 
many  subscribers  sent  in  their  names,  and  laid  down  their 
money ;  but  he  soon  found  the   task  so  little  to  his  taste, 


340  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

that  he  turned  to  more  attractive  employments.  He  con- 
trilJuted  many  papers  to  a  new  monthly  journal,  which  was 
called  the  Literary  Magazine.  Few  of  these  papers  have 
much  interest ;  but  among  them  was  the  very  best  thing 
that  he  ever  wrote,  a  masterpiece  both  of  reasoning  and  of 
satirical  pleasantry,  the  .review  of  Jenyns's  Inquiry  into  the 
Nature  and  Origin  of  Evil. 

In  the  spring  of  1758  Johnson  put  forth  the  first  of  a 
series  of  essays,  entitled  The  Idler.  During  two  years 
these  essays  continued  to  appear  weekly.  They  were 
eagerly  read,  widely  circulated,  and,  indeed,  impudently 
pirated  while  they  were  still  in  the  original  form,  and  had  a 
large  sale  when  collected  into  volumes.  The  Idler  may 
be  described  as  a  second  part  of  the  Rambler,  somewhat 
livelier  and  somewhat  weaker  than  the  first  part. 

While  Johnson  was  busied  with  his  Idlers,  his  mother,  who 
had  accomplished  her  ninetieth  year,  died  at  Lichfield.  It 
was  long  since  he  had  seen  her ;  but  he  had  not  failed  to 
contribute  largely  out  of  his  small  means,  to  her  comfort. 
In  order  to  defray  the  charges  of  her  funeral,  and  to  pay 
some  debts  which  she  had  left,  he  wrote  a  little  book  in  a 
single  week,  and  sent  off  the  sheets  to  the  press  without 
reading  them  over.  A  hundred  pounds  were  paid  him  for 
the  copyright ;  and  the  purchasers  had  great  cause  to  be 
pleased  with  their  bargain ;  for  the  book  was  Rasselas. 

The  success  of  Rasselas  was  great,  though  such  ladies  as 
Miss  Lydia  Languish  must  have  been  greviously  disap- 
pointed when  they  found  that  the  new  volume  from  the  cir- 
culating library  was  little  more  than  a  dissertation  on  the 
author's  favorite  theme,  the  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes ; 
that  the  Prince  of  Abyssinia  was  without  a  mistress,  and 
the  Princess  without  a  lover ;  and  that  the  story  set  the 
hero  and  the  heroine  down  exactly  where  it  had  taken  them 
up.  The  style  was  the  subject  of  much  eager  controversy. 
The  Monthly  Review  and  the  Critical  Review  took  different 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  341 

sides.  Many  readers  pronounced  the  writer  a  pompous 
pedant,  who  would  never  use  a  word  of  two  syllables  where 
it  was  possible  to  use  a  word  of  six,  and  who  could  not 
make  a  waiting  woman  relate  her  adventures  without  bal- 
ancing every  noun  with  another  noun,  and  every  epithet 
with  another  epithet  Another  party,  not  less  zealous,  cited 
with  delight  numerous  passages  in  which  weighty  meaning 
was  expressed  with  accuracy  and  illustrated  with  splendor. 
And  both  the  censure  and  the  praise  were  merited. 

About  the  plan  of  Hasselas  little  was  said  by  the  critics ; 
and  yet  the  faults  of  the  plan  might  seem  to  invite  severe 
criticism.  Johnson  has  frequently  blamed  Shakspeare  for 
neglecting  the  proprieties  of  time  and  place,  and  for  ascrib- 
ing to  one  age  or  nation  the  manners  and  opinions  of 
another.  Yet  Shakspeare  has  not  sinned  in  this  way  more 
grievously  than  Johnson.  Rasselas  and  Imlac,  Nekayah 
and  Pekuah,  are  evidently  meant  to  be  Abyssinians  of  the 
eighteenth  century ;  for  the  Europe  which  Imlac  describes 
is  the  Europe  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  and  the  inmates 
of  the  Happy  Valley  talk  familiarly  of  that  law  of  gravita- 
tion which  Newton  discovered,  and  which  was  not  fully 
received  even  at  Cambridge  till  the  eighteenth  century. 
What  a  real  company  of  Abyssinians  would  have  been  may 
be  learned  from  Bruce's  Travels.  But  Johnson,  not  content 
with  turning  filthy  savages,  ignorant  of  their  letters,  and 
gorged  with  raw  steaks  cut  from  living  cows,  into  philoso- 
phers as  eloquent  and  enlightened  as  himself  or  his  friend 
Burke,  and  into  ladies  as  highly  accomplished  as  Mrs.  Len- 
nox or  Mrs.  Sheridan,  transferred  the  whole  domestic  sys- 
tem of  England  to  Egypt.  Into  a  land  of  harems,  a  land 
of  polygamy,  a  land  ^here  women  are  married  without  ever 
being  seen,  he  introduced  the  flirtations  and  jealousies  of  our 
ballrooms.  In  a  land  where  there  is  boundless  liberty  of 
divorce,  wedlock  is  described  as  the  indissoluble  compact. 
''^A  youth  and  maiden  meeting  by  chance,  or  brought  to- 
29* 


342  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

gether  by  artifice,  exchange  glances,  reciprocate  civilities, 
go  home,  and  dream  of  each  other.  Such,"  says  Rasselas, 
"  is  the  common  process  of  marriage."  Such  it  may  have 
been,  and  may  still  be,  in  London,  but  assuredly  not  at 
Cairo.  A  writer  who  was  guilty  of  such  improprieties  had 
little  right  to  blame  the  poet  who  made  Hector  quote  Aris- 
totle, and  represented  Julio  Romano  as  flourishing  in  the 
days  of  the  oracle  of  Delphi. 

By  such  exertions  as  have  been  described,  Johnson  sup- 
ported himself  till  the  year  1762.  In  that  year  a  great 
change  in  his  circumstances  took  place.  He  had  from  a 
child  been  an  enemy  of  the  reigning  dynasty.  His  Jacobite 
prejudices  had  been  exhibited  with  little  disguise  both  in  his 
works  and  in  his  conversation.  Even  in  his  massy  and 
elaborate  Dictionary,  he  had,  with  a  strange  want  of  taste 
and  judgment,  inserted  bitter  and  contumelious  reflections 
on  the  Whig  party.  The  excise,  which  was  a  favorite  re- 
source of  Whig  financiers,  he  had  designated  as  a  hateful 
tax.  He  had  railed  against  the  commissioners  of  excise  in 
language  so  coarse,  that  they  had  seriously  thought  of  pros- 
ecuting him.  He  had  with  difficulty  been  prevented  from 
holding  up  the  Lord  Privy  Seal  by  name  as  an  example  of 
the  meaning  of  the  word  "  renegade."  A  pension  he  had 
defined  as  pay  given  to  a  state  hireling  to  betray  his  coun- 
try ;  a  pensioner  as  a  slave  of  state  hired  by  a  stipend  to 
obey  a  master.  It  seemed  unlikely  that  the  author  of  these 
definitions  would  himself  be  pensioned.  But  that  was  a 
time  of  wonders.  George  the  Third  had  ascended  the 
throne ;  and  had,  in  the  course  of  a  few. months,  disgusted 
many  of  the  old  friends,  and  conciliated  many  of  the  old 
enemies  of  his  house.  The  city  was,  becoming  mutinous. 
Oxford  was  becoming  loyal.  Cavendishes  and  Bentincks 
were  murmuring.  Somersets  and  Wyndhams  were  hasten- 
ing to  kiss  hands.  The  head  of  the  treasury  was  now  Lord 
Bute,  who  was  a  Tory,  and  could  have  no  objection  to 


SAMUEL  j6hnson.  343 

Johnson's  Toryism.  Bute  wished  to  be  thought  a  patron  of 
men  of  letters ;  and  Johnson  was  one  of  the  most  eminent 
and  one  of  the  most  needy  men  of  letters  in  Europe.  A 
pension  of  three  hundred  a  year  was  graciously  offered,  and 
with  very  little  hesitation  accepted. 

This  event  produced  a  change  in  Johnson's  whole  way  of 
life.  For  the  first  time  since  his  boyhood  he  no  longer  felt 
the  daily  goad  urging  him  to  the  daily  toil.  He  was  at  lib- 
erty, after  thirty  years  of  anxiety  and  drudgery,  to  indulge 
his  constitutional  indolence,  to  lie  in  bed  till  two  in  the  after- 
noon, and  to  sit  up  talking  till  four  in  the  morning,  without 
fearing  either  the  printer's  devil  or  the  sheriff's  officer. 

One  laborious  task  indeed  he  had  bound  himself  to  per- 
form. He  had  received  large  subscriptions  for  his  promised 
edition  of  Shakspeare ;  he  had  lived  on  those  subscriptions 
during  some  years  ;  and  he  could  not  without  disgrace  omit 
to  perform  his  part  of  the  contract.  His  friends  repeatedly 
exhorted  him  to  make  an  effort ;  and  he  repeatedly  resolved 
to  do  so.  But,  notwithstanding  their  exhortations  and  his 
resolutions,  month  followed  month,  year  followed  year,  and 
nothing  was  done.  He  prayed  fervently  against  his  idle- 
ness ;  he  determined,  as  often  as  he  received  the  sacrament, 
that  he  would  no  longer  doze  away  and  trifle  away  his 
time  ;  but  the  spell  under  which  he  lay  resisted  prayer  and 
sacrament.  His  private  notes  at  this  time  are  made  up  of 
self-reproaches.  "  My  indolence,"  he  wrote  on  Easter  eve 
in  1764,  "has  sunk  into  grosser  sluggishness.  A  kind  of 
strange  oblivion  has  overspread  me,  so  that  I  know  not 
what  has  become  of  the  last  year."  Easter  1765  came,  and 
found  him  still  in  the  same  state.  "  My  time,"  he  wrote, 
"  has  been  unprofitably  spent,  and  seems  as  a  dream  that 
has  left  nothing  behind.  My  memory  grows  confused,  and 
I  know  not  how  the  days  pass  over  me."  Happily  for  his 
honor,  the  charm  which  held  him  captive  was  at  length 
broken  by  no  gentle  or  friendly  hand.     He  had  been  weak 


344  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

enough  to  pay  serious  attention  to  a  story  about  a  ghost 
which  haunted  a  house  in  Cock  Lane,  and  bad  actually  gone 
himself,  with  some  of  his  friends,  at  one  in  the  morning,  to 
St.  John's  Church,  Clerkenwell,  in  the  hope  of  receiving  a 
communication  from  the  perturbed  spirit.  But  the  spirit, 
though  adjured  with  all  solemnity,  remained  obstinately 
silent ;  and  it  soon  appeared  that  a  naughty  girl  of  eleven 
had  been  amusing  herself  by  making  fools  of  so  many  phi- 
losophers. Churchill,  who,  confident  in  his  powers,  drunk 
with  popularity,  and  burning  with  party  spirit,  was  looking 
for  some  man  of  established  fame  and  Tory  politics  to 
insult,  celebrated  the  Cock  Lane  Ghost  in  three  cantos, 
nicknamed  Johnson  Pomposo,  asked  where  the  book  was 
which  had  been  so  long  promised  and  so  liberally  paid  for, 
and  directly  accused  the  great  moralist  of  cheating.  This 
terrible  word  proved  effectual;  and  in  October,  1765,  ap- 
peared, after  a  delay  of  nine  years,  the  New  Edition  of 
Shakspeare. 

This  publication  saved  Johnson's  character  for  honesty, 
but  added  nothing  to  the  fame  of  his  abilities  and  learning. 
The  preface,  though  it  contains  some  good  passages,  is  not 
in  his  best  manner.  The  most  valuable  notes  are  those  in 
which  he  had  an  opportunity  of  showing  how  attentively  he 
had  during  many  years  observed  human  life  and  human 
nature.  The  best  specimen  is  the  note  on  the  character  of 
Polonius.  Nothing  so  good  is  to  be  found  even  in  Wilhelra 
Meister's  admirable  examination  of  Hamlet.  But  here 
praise  must  end.  It  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  more 
slovenly,  a  more  worthless  edition  of  any  great  classic. 
The  reader  may  turn  over  play  after  play  without  finding 
one  happy  conjectural  emendation,  or  one  ingenious  and 
satisfactory  explanation  of  a  passage  which  had  baffled  pre- 
ceding commentators.  Johnson  had,  in  his  Prospectus,  told 
the  world  that  he  was  peculiarly  fitted  for  the  task  which  he 
had  undertaken,  because  he  had,  as  a  lexicographer,  been 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  345 

under  the  necessity  of  taking  a  wider  view  of  the  English 
language  than  any  of  his  predecessors.  That  his  knowl- 
edge of  our  literature  was  extensive  is  indisputable.  But, 
unfortunately,  he  had  altogether  neglected  that  very  part  of 
our  literature  with  which  it  is  especially  desirable  that  an 
editor  of  Shakspeare  should  be  conversant.  It  is  dangerous 
to  assert  a  negative.  Yet  little  will  be  risked  by  the  asser- 
tion, that  in  the  two  folio  volumes  of  the  English  Dictionary, 
there  is  not  a  single  passage  quoted  from  any  dramatist  of 
the  Elizabethan  age,  except  Shakspeare  and  Ben.  Even 
from  Ben  the  quotations  are  few.  Johnson  might  easily,  in 
a  few  months,  have  made  himself  well  acquainted  with 
every  old  play  that  was  extant.  But  it  never  seems  to 
have  occurred  to  him  that  this  was  a  necessary  preparation 
for  the  work  which  he  had  undertaken.  He  would  doubt- 
less have  admitted,  that  it  would  be  the  height  of  absurdity 
in  a  man  who  was  not  familiar  with  the  works  of  JEschylus 
and  Euripides,  to  publish  an  edition  of  Sophocles.  Yet  he 
ventured  to  publish  an  edition  of  Shakspeare,  without  hav- 
ing ever  in  his  life,  as  far  as  can  be  discovered,  read  a  single 
scene  of  Massinger,  Ford,  Decker,  Webster,  Marlow,  Beau- 
mont, or  Fletcher.  His  detractors  were  noisy  and  scurril- 
ous. Those  who  most  loved  and  honored  him,  had  little  to 
say  in  praise  of  the  manner  in  which  he  had  discharged 
the  duty  of  a  commentator.  He  had,  however,  acquitted 
himself  of  a  debt  which  had  long  lain  heavy  on  his  con- 
science, and  he  sank  back  into  the  repose  from  which  the 
sting  of  satire  had  roused  him.  He  long  continued  to  live 
upon  the  fame  which  he  had  already  won.  He  was  honored 
by  the  University  of  Oxford  with  a  Doctor's  degree,  by  the 
Royal  Academy  with  a  professorship,  and  by  the  King  with 
an  interview,  in  which  his  Majesty  most  graciously  ex- 
pressed a  hope  that  so  excellent  a  writer  would  not  cease  to 
write.  In  the  interval,  however,  between  1765  and  1775, 
Johnson  published  only  two  or  three   political  tracte,  the 


346  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES., 

longest  of  which  he  could  have  produced  in  forty-eight 
hours,  if  he  had  worked  as  he  worked  on  the  Life  of  Sav- 
age and  on  Rasselas. 

But,  thc^gh  his  pen  was  now  idle,  his  tongue  was  active. 
The  influence  exercised  by  his  conversation,  directly  upon 
those  with  whom  he  lived  and  indirectly  on  the  whole  liter- 
ary world,  was  altogether  without  a  parallel.  His  colloquial 
talents  were  indeed  of  the  highest  order.  He  had  strong 
sense,  quick  discernment,  wit,  humor,  immense  knowledge 
of  literature  and  of  life,  and  an  infinite  store  of  curious 
anecdotes.  As  respected  style,  he  spoke  far  better  than  he 
wrote.  Every  sentence  which  dropped  from  his  lips  was  as 
correct  in  structure  as  the  most  nicely  balanced  period  of 
the  Rambler.  But  in  his  talk  there  were  no  pompous 
triads,  and  little  more  than  a  fair  proportion  of  words  in 
osity  and  ation.  All  was  simplicity,  ease,  and  vigor.  He 
uttered  his  short,  weighty,  and  pointed  sentences,  with  a 
power  of  voice,  and  a  justness  and  energy  of  emphasis,  of 
which  the  effect  was  rather  increased  than  diminished  by  the 
rollings  of  his  huge  form,  and  by  the  asthmatic  gaspings 
and  puffings  in  which  the  peals  of  his  eloquence  generally 
ended.  Nor  did  the  laziness  which  made  him  unwilling  to 
sit  down  to  his  desk,  prevent  him  from  giving  instruction  or 
entertainment  orally.  To  discuss  questions  of  taste,  of 
learning,  of  casuistry,  in  language  so  exact  and  so  forcible 
that  it  might  have  been  printed  without  the  alteration  of  a 
word,  was  to  him  no  exertion,  but  a  pleasure.  He  loved,  as 
he  said,  to  fold  his  legs  and  have  his  talk  out.  He  was 
ready  to  bestow  the  overflowings  of  his  full  mind  on  any- 
body who  would  start  a  subject,  on  a  fellow-passenger  in  a 
(Stage-coach,  or  on  the  person  who  sate  at  the  same  table 
with  him  in  an  eating-house.  But  his  conversation  was  no- 
where so  brilliant  and  striking  as  when  he  was  surrounded 
by  a  few  friends,  whose  abilities  and  knowledge  enabled 
them,  as  he  once  expressed  it,  to  send  him  back  every  ball 


_  SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  34? 

that  he  threw.  Some  of  these,  in  1764,  formed  themselves 
into  a  club,  which  gradually  became  a  formidable  power  in 
the  commonwealth  of  letters.  The  verdicts  pronounced  by 
this  conclave  on  new  books  were  speedily  known  over  all 
London,  and  were  sufficient  to  sell  off  a  whole  edition  in  a 
day,  or  to  condemn  the  sheets  to  the  service  of  the  trunk- 
maker  and  the  pastry-cook.  Nor  shall  we  think  this  strange, 
when  we  consider  what  great  and  various  talents  and  ac- 
quirements met  in  the  little  fraternity.  Goldsmith  was  the 
representative  of  poetry  and  light  literature,  Reynolds  of  the 
arts,  Burke  of  political  eloquence  and  political  philosophy. 
There,  too,  were  Gibbon,  the  greatest  historian,  and  Jones, 
the  greatest  linguist,  of  the  age.  Garrick  brought  to  the 
meeting  his  inexhaustible  pleasantry,  his  incomparable  mim- 
icry, and  his  consummate  knowledge  of  stage  effect.  Among 
the  most  constant  attendants  were  two  high-born  and  high- 
bred gentlemen,  closely  bound  together  by  friendship,  but  of 
widely  different  character?  and  habits :  Bennet  Langton, 
distinguished  by  his  skill  in  Greek  literature,  by  the  ortho- 
doxy of  his  opinions,  and  by  the  sanctity  of  his  life ;  and 
Topham  Beauclerk,  renowned  for  his  amours,  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  gay  world,  his  fastidious  taste,  and  his  sarcastic 
wit.  To  predominate  over  such  a  society  was  not  easy. 
Yet  even  over  such  a  society  Johnson  predominated.  Burke 
might  indeed  have  disputed  the  supremacy  to  which  others 
were  under  the  necessity  of  submitting.  But  Burke,  though 
not  generally  a  very  patient  listener,  was  content  to  take  the 
second  part  when  Johnson  was  present ;  and  the  club  itself, 
consisting  of  so  many  eminent  men,  is  to  this  day  popularly 
designated  as  Johnson's  club. 

Among  the  members  of  this  celebrated  body  was  one  to 

whom  it  has  owed  the  greater  part  of  its  celebrity,  yet  who 

.  was  regarded  with  little  respect  by  his  brethren,  and  had 

not  without  difficulty  obtained  a  seat  among  them.     This 

was  James  Bos  well,  a  young  Scotch  lawyer,  heir  to  an  hon- 


346  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

orable  name  and  a  fair  estate.  That  he  was  a  coxcomb  and 
a  bore,  weak,  vain,  pushing,  curious,  garrulous,  was  obvious 
to  all  who  were  acquainted  with  him.  That  he  could  not 
reason,  that  he  had  no  wit,  no  humor,  no  eloquence,  is  ap- 
parent from  his  writings.  And  yet  his  writings  are  read 
beyond  the  Mississippi,  and  under  the  Southern  Cross,  and 
are  likely  to  be  read  as  long  as  the  English  exists,  either  as 
a  living  or  as  a  dead  language.  Nature  had  made  him  a 
slave  and  an  idolater.  His  mind  resembled  those  creepers 
which  the  botanists  call  parasites,  and  which  can  subsist  only 
by  clinging  round  the  stems  and  imbibing  the  juices  of 
stronger  plants.  He  must  have  fastened  himself  on  some- 
body. He  might  have  fastened  himself  on  Wilkes,  and 
have  become  the  fiercest  patriot  in  the  Bill  of  Rights  So- 
ciety. He  might  have  fastened  himself  on  Whitfield,  and 
have  become  the  loudest  field  preacher  among  the  Calvin- 
istic  Methodists.  In  a  happy  hour  he  fastened  himself  on 
Johnson.  The  pair  might  seemgill  matched.  For  Johnson 
had  early  been  prejudiced  against  Boswell's  country.  To  a 
man  of  Johnson's  strong  understanding  and  irritable  temper, 
the  silly  egotism  and»  adulation  of  Boswell  must  have  been 
as  teasing  as  the  constant  buzz  of  a  fly.  Johnson  hated  to 
be  questioned  ;  and  Boswell  was  eternally  catechizing  him 
on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  and  sometimes  propounded  such 
questions  as,  "  What  would  you  do,  Sir,  if  you  were  locked 
up  in  a  tower  with  a  baby  ?  "  Johnson  was  a  water  drinker 
and  Boswell  was  a  winebibber,  and  indeed  little  better  than 
an  habitual  sot.  Ife  was  impossible  that  there  should  be  per- 
fect harmony  between  two  such  companions.  Indeed,  the 
great  man  was  sometimes  provoked  into  fits  of  passion,  in 
which  he  said  things  which  the  small  man,  during  a  few 
hours,  seriously  resented.  Every  quarrel,  however,  was 
soon  made  up.  During  twenty  years  the  disciple  continued 
to  worship  the  master :  the  master  continued  to  scold  the 
disciple,  to  sneer  at  him,  and  to  love  him.     The  two  friends 


SAMUEL   JOHXSOK.  349 

• 

ordinarily  resided  at  a  great  distance  from  each  other. 
Boswell  practised  in  the  Parliament  House  of  Edinburgh, 
and  could  pay  only  occasional  visits  to  London.  ,  During 
those  visits  his  chief  business  was  to  watch  Johnson,  to  dis- 
cover all  Johnson's  habits,  to  turn  the  conversation  to  sub- 
jects about  which  Johnson  was  likely  to  say  something  re- 
markable, and  to  fill  quarto  note-books  with  minutes  of  what 
Johnson  had  said.  In  this  way  were  gathered  the  materials 
out  of  which  was  afterwards  constructed  the  most  interesting 
biographical  work  in  the  world. 

Soon  after  the  club  began  to  exist,  Johnson  formed  a  con- 
nection less  important  indeed  to  his  fame,  but  much  more 
important  to  his  happiness,  than  his  connection  with  Boswell. 
Henry  Thrale,  one  of  the  most  opulent  brewers  in  the  king- 
dom, a  man  of  sound  and  cultivated  understanding,  rigid 
principles,  and  liberal  spirit,  was  married  to  one  of  those 
clever,  kind-hearted,  engaging,  vain,  pert  young  women, 
who  are  perpetually  doing  or  saying  what  is  not  exactly 
right,  but  who,  do  or  say  what  they  may,  are  always  agre^ 
able.  In  1765  the  Thrales  became  acquainted  with  John- 
son, and  the  acquaintance  ripened  fast  into  friendship.  They 
were  astonished  and  delighted  by  the  brilliancy  of  his  con- 
versation. They  were  flattered  by  finding  that  a  man  so 
widely  celebrated  preferred  their  house  to  any  other  in 
London.  Even  the  peculiarities  which  seemed  to  unfit  him 
for  civilized  society,  his  gesticulations,  his  roUings,  his  puf- 
fings, his  mutterings,  the  strange  way  in  which  he  put  on  his 
clothes,  the  ravenous  eagerness  with  which  he  devoured  his 
dinner,  his  fits  of  melancholy,  his  fits  of  anger,  his  frequent 
rudeness,  his  occasional  ferocity,  increased  the  interest  which 
his  new  associates  took  in  him.  For  these  things  were  the 
cruel  marks  left  behind  by  a  life  which  had  been  one  long  con- 
flict with  disease  and  with  adversity.  In  a  vulgar  hack  writ- 
er, such  oddities  would  have  excited  only  disgust.  But  in  a 
man  of  genius,  learning,  and  virtue,  their  effect  was  to  add 
30 


350  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

pity  to  admiration  and  esteem.  Johnson  soon  had  an  apart- 
ment at  the  brewery  in  Southwark,  and  a  still  more  pleasant 
apartment  at  the  villa  of  his  friends  on  Streatham  Common. 
A  large  part  of  every  year  he  passed  in  those  abodes,  abodes 
which  must  have  seemed  magnificent. and  luxurious  indeed, 
when  compared  with  the  dens  in  which  he  had  generally  been 
lodged.  But  his  chief  pleasures  were  derived  from  what 
the  astronomer  of  his  Abyssinian  tale  called  "  the  endearing 
elegance  of  female  friendship."  Mrs.  Thrale  rallied  him, 
soothed  him,  coaxed  him,  and,  if  she  sometimes  provoked 
him  by  her  flippancy,  made  ample  amends  by  listening  to 
his  reproofs  with  angelic  ^eetness  of  temper.  When  he 
was  diseased  in  body  and  in  mind,  she  was  the  most  tender 
of  nurses.  No  comfort  that  wealth  could  purchase,  no  con- 
trivance that  womanly  ingenuity,  set  to  work  by  womanly 
compassion,  could  devise,  was  wanting  to  his  sick  room.  He 
requited  her  kindness  by  an  affection  pure  as  the  affection 
of  a  father,  yet  delicately  tinged  with  a  gallantry,  which, 
though  awkward,  must  have  been  more  flattering  than  the 
attentions  of  a  crowd  of  the  fools  who  gloried  in  the  names, 
now  obsolete,  of  Buck  and  Maccaroni.  It  should  seem  that 
a  full  half  of  Johnson's  life,  during  about  sixteen  years,  was 
passed  under  the  roof  of  the  Thrales.  He  accompanied  the 
family  sometimes  to  Bath,  and  sometimes  to  Brighton,  once 
to  Wales,  and  once  to  Paris.  But  he  had  at  the  same  time 
a  house  in  one  of  the  narrow  and  gloomy  courts  on  the 
north  of  Fleet  Street.  In  the  garrets  was  his  library,  a 
large  and  miscellaneous  collection  of  books,  falling  to  pieces 
and  begrimmed  with  dust.  On  a  lower  floor  he  sometimes, 
but  very  rarely,  regaled  a  friend  with  a  plain  dinner,  a  veal 
pie,  or  a  leg  of  lamb  and  spinage,  and  a  rice  pudding.  Nor 
was  the  dwelling  uninhabited  during  his  long  absences.  It 
was  the  home  of  the  most  extraordinary  assemblage  of  in- 
mates that  ever  was  brought  together.  At  the  head  of  the 
establishment  Johnson  had  placed  an  old  lady  named  Wil- 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.  351 

liams,  whose  chief  recommendations  were  her  blindness  and 
her  poverty.  But,  in  spite  of  her  mumiurs  and  reproaches 
he  gave  an  asylum  to  another  lady  who  was  as  poor  as  her- 
self, Mrs.  Desmoulins,  whose  family  he  had  known  many 
years  before  in  Staffordshire.  Room  was  found  for  the 
daughter  of  Mrs.  Desmoulins,  and  for  another  destitute 
damsel,  who  was  generally  addressed  as  Miss  Carmichael, 
but  whom  her  generous  host  called  Polly.  An  old  quack 
doctor  named  Levett,  who  bled  and  dosed  coal-heavers  and 
hackney  coachmen,  and  received  for  fees  crusts  of  bread, 
bits  of  bacon,  glasses  of  gin,  and  sometimes  a  little  copper, 
completed  this  strange  menagerie.  All  tliese  poor  creatures 
were  at  constant  war  with  each  other,  and  with  Johnson's 
negro  servant  Frank.  Sometimes,  indeed,  they  transferred 
their  hostihties  from  the  servant  to  the  master,  complained 
that  a  better  table  was  not  kept  for  them,  and  railed  or 
maundered  till  their  benefactor  was  glad  to  make  his  escape 
to  Streatham,  or  to  the  Mitre  Tavern.  And  yet  he,  who 
was  generally  the  haughtiest  and  most  irritable  of  mankind-, 
who  was  but  too  prompt  to  resent  any  thing  which  looked 
like  a  slight  on  the  part  of  a  purse-proud  bookseller,  or  of  a 
noble  and  powerful  patron,  bore  patiently  from  mendicants, 
who,  but  for  his  bounty,  must  have  gone  to  the  workhouse, 
insults  more  provoking  than  those  for  which  he  had  knocked 
down  Osborne  and  bidden  defiance  to  Chesterfield.  Year 
after  year  Mrs.  Williams  and  Mrs.  Desmoulins,  Polly  and 
Levett,  continued  to  torment  him  and  to  live  upon  him. 

The  course  of  life  which  has  been  described  was  inter- 
rupted in  Johnson's  sixty-fourth  year  by  an  important  event. 
He  had  early  read  an  account  of  the  Hebrides,  and  had 
been  much  interested  by  learning  that  there  was  so  near 
him  a  land  peopled  by  a  race  which  was  still  as  rude  and 
simple  as  in  the  Middle  Ages.  A  wish  to  become  intimate- 
ly acquainted  with  a  state  of  society  so  utterly  unlike  all 
that  he  had  ever  seen  frequently  crossed  his  mind.     But  it 


352  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

is  not  probable  that  his  curiosity  would  have  overcome  his 
habitual  sluggishness,  and  his  love  of  the  smoke,  the  mud, 
and  the  cries  of  London,  had  not  Boswell  importuned  him 
to  attempt  the  adventure,  and  offered  to  be  his  squire.  At 
length,  in  August,  1773,  Johnson  crossed  the  Highland  line, 
and  plunged  courageously  into*  what  was  then  considered  by 
most  Englishmen  as  a  dreary  and  perilous  wilderness. 
After  wandering  about  two  months  through  the  Celtic 
region,  sometimes  in  rude  boats  which  did  not  protect  him 
from  the  rain,  and  sometimes  on  small  shaggy  ponies  which 
could  hardly  bear  his  weight,  he  returned  to  his  old  haunts 
with  a  mind  full  of  new  images  and  new  theories.  During 
the  following  year  he  employed  himself  in  recording  his  ad- 
ventures. About  the  beginning  of  1775,  his  Journey  to  the 
Hebrides  was  published,  and  was,  during  some  weeks,  the 
chief  subject  of  conversation  in  all  circles  in  which  any  at- 
tention was  paid  to  literature.  The  book  is  still  read  with 
pleasure.  The  narrative  is  entertaining;  the  speculations, 
whether  sound  or  unsound,  are  always  ingenious  ;  and  the 
style,  though  too  stiff  and  pompous,  is  somewhat  easier 
and  more  graceful  than  that  of  his  early  writings.  His 
prejudice  against  the  Scotch  had  at  length  become  little 
more  than  matter  of  jest ;  and  whatever  remained  of  the 
old  feeling  had  been  effectually  removed  by  the  kind  and 
respectful  hospitality  with  which  he  had  been  received 
in  every  part  of  Scotland.  It  was,  of  course,  not  to  be  ex- 
pected that  an  Oxonian  Tory  should  praise  the  Presbyterian 
polity  and  ritual,  or  that  an  eye  accustomed  to  the  hedgerows 
and  parks  of  England  should  not  be  struck  by  the  bareness 
of  Berwickshire  and  East  Lothian.  But  even  in  censure 
Johnson's  tone  is  not  unfriendly.  The  most  enlightened 
Scotchmen,  with  Lord  Mansfield  at  their  head,  were  well 
pleased.  But  some  foolish  and  ignorant  Scotchmen  were 
moved  to  anger  by  a  little  unpala^ble  truth  which  was 
mingled  with  much  eulogy,  and  assailed  him  whom  they 


SAMUEL   JOHNSpN.  353 

chose  to  consider  as  the  enemy  of  their  country  with  libels 
much  more  dishonorable  to  their  country  than  any  thing  that 
he  had  ever  said  or  written.  They  published  paragraphs  in 
the  newspapers,  articles  in  the  magazines,  sixpenny  pam- 
phlets, five-shilling  books.  One  scribbler  abused  Johnson 
for  being  blear-eyed ;  another  for  being  a  pensioner ;  a  third 
informed  the  world  that  one  of  the  Doctor's  uncles  had  been 
convicted  of  felony  in  Scotland,  and  had  found  that  there 
was  in  that  country  one  tree  capable  of  supporting  the 
weight  of  an  Englishman.  Macpherson,  whose  Fingal  had 
been  proved  in  the  Journey  to  be  an  impudent  forgery, 
threatened  to  take  vengeance  with  a  cane.  The  only  effect 
of  this  threat  was  that  Johnson  reiterated  the  charge  of 
forgery  in  the  most  contemptuous  terms,  and  walked  about 
during  some  time,  with  a  cudgel,  which,  if  the  impostor  had 
not  been  too  wise  to  encounter  it,  would  assuredly  have  de- 
scended upon  him,  to  borrow  the  sublime  language  of  his 
own  epic  poem,  "  like  a  hammer  on  the  red  son  of  ihe  fur- 
nace." 

Of  other  assailants  Johnson  took  no  notice  whatever.  He 
had  early  resolved  never  to  be  drawn  into  controversy  ;  and 
he  adhered  to  his  resolution  with  a  steadfastness  which  is 
the  more  extraordinary  because  he  was,  both  intellectually 
and  morally,  of  the  stuff  of  which  controversialists  are  made. 
In  conversation  he  was  a  singularly  eager,  acute,  and  perti- 
nacious disputant.  When  at  a  loss  for  good  reasons,  he  had 
recourse  to  sophistry ;  and  when  heated  by  altercation,  he 
made  unsparing  use  of  sarcasm  and  invective.  But  when 
he  took  his  pen  in  his  hand,  his  whole  character  seemed  to 
be  changed.  A  hundred  bad  writers  misrepresented  him  and 
reviled  him  ;  but  not  one  of  the  hundred  could  boast  of  hav- 
ing been  thought  by  him  worthy  of  a  refutation,  or  even  of 
a  retort.  The  Kenricks,  Campbells,  MacNichols,  and  Hen- 
dersons did  their  best  to  annoy  him,  in  the  hope  that  he 
would  give  them  importance  by  answering  them.  But  the 
30* 


354  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

reader  will  in  vain  search  his  works  for  any  allusion  to  Ken- 
rick  or  Campbell,  to  MacNichol  or  Henderson.  One 
Scotchman,  bent  on  vindicating  the  fame  of  Scotch  learn- 
ing, defied  him  to  the  combat  in  a  detestable  Latin  hex- 
ameter. 

"  Maxirae,  si  tu  vis,  cupio  contendere  tecum." 

But  Johnson  took  no  notice  of  the  challenge.  He  had 
learned,  both  from  his  own  observation  and  from  literary 
history,  in  which  he  was  deeply  read,  that  the  place  of  books 
in  the  public  estimation  is  fixed,  not  by  what  is  written  about 
them,  but  by  what  is  written  in  them ;  and  that  an  author 
whose  works  are  likely  to  live  is  very  unwise  if  he  stoops  to 
wrangle  with  detractors  whose  works  are  certain  to  die. 
He  always  maintained  that  fame  was  a  shuttlecock,  which 
could  be  kept  up  only  by  being  beaten  back,  as  well  as 
beaten  forward,  and  which  would  soon  fall  if  there  were 
only  one  battledore.  No  saying  was  oftener  in  his  mouth 
than  that  fine  apothegm  of  Bentley,  that  no  man  was  ever 
written  down  but  by  himself. 

Unhappily,  a  few  months  after  the  appearance  of  the  Jour- 
ney to  the  Hebrides,  Johnson  did  what  none  of  his  envious 
assailants  could  have  done,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  succeeded 
in  writing  himself  down.  The  disputes  between  England 
and  her  American  colonies  had  reached  a  point  at  which  no 
amicable  adjustment  was  possible.  Civil  war  was  evidently 
impending ;  and  the  ministers  seem  to  have  thought  that  the 
eloquence  of  Johnson  might,  with  advantage,  be  employed 
to  inflame  the  nation  against  the  opposition  here,  and  against 
the  rebels  beyond  the  Atlantic.  He  had  already  written 
two  or  three  tracts  in  defence  of  the  foreign  and  domestic 
policy  of  the  government ;  rfnd  those  tracts,  though  hardly 
worthy  of  him,  were  much  superior  to  the  crowd  of  pam- 
phlets which  lay  on  the  counters  of  Almon  and  Stockdale. 
But  his  Taxation  No  Tyranny  was  a  pitiable  failure.     The 


SAMUEL    JOHNSON.         #  355 

very  title  was  a  silly  phrase,  which  can  have  been  recom- 
mended to  his  choice  by  nothing  but  a  jingling  alliteration 
which  he  ought  to  have  despised.  The  arguments  were 
such  as  boys  use  in  debating  societies.  The  pleasantry  was 
as  awkward  as  the  gambols  of  a  hippopotamus.  Even  Bos- 
well  was  forced  to  own  that,  in  this  unfortunate  piece,  he 
could  detect  no  ti-ace  of  his  master's  powers.  The  general 
opinion  was,  that  the  strong  faculties  which  had  produced 
the  Dictionary  and  the  Rambler  were  beginning  to  feel  the 
effect  of  time  and  of  disease,  and  that  the  old  man  would  best 
consult  his  credit  by  writing  no  more. 

But  this  was  a  great  mistake.  Johnson  had  failed,  not 
because  his  mind  was  less  vigorous  than  when  he  wrote 
Rasselas  in  the  evenings  of  a  week,  but  because  he  had 
foolishly  chosen,  or  suffered  others  to  choose  for  him,  a  sub- 
ject such  as  he  would  at  no  time  have  been  competent  to 
treat.  He  was  in  no  sense  a  statesman.  He  never  willingly 
read,  or  thought,  or  talked  about  affairs  of  state.  He  loved 
biography,  Uterary  history,  the  history  of  manners ;  but 
political  history  was  positively  distasteful  to  him.  The 
question  at  issue  between  the  colonies  and  the  mother 
country  was  a  question  about  which  he  had  really  nothing 
to  say.  He  failed,  therefore,  as  the  greatest  men  must  fail 
when  they  attempt  to  do  that  for  which  they  are  unfit ;  as 
Burke  would  have  failed  if  Burke  had  tried  to  write  come- 
dies like  those  of  Sheridan  ;  as  Reynolds  would  have  failed 
if  Reynolds  had  tried  to  paint  landscapes  like  those  of  Wil- 
son. Happily,  Johnson  soon  had  an  opportunity  of  proving 
most  signally  that  his  failure  was  not  to  be  ascribed  to  intel- 
lectual decay. 

On  Easter  eve,  1777,  some  persons,  deputed  by  a  meet- 
ing which  consisted  of  forty  of  the  first  booksellers  in  Lon- 
don, called  upon  him.  Though  he  had  some  scruples  about 
doing  business  at  that  season,  he  received  his  visitors  with 


356  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

much  civility.  They  came  to  inform  him  that  a  new  edition 
of  the  English  poets,  from  Cowley  downward,  was  in  con- 
templation, and  to  ask  him  to  furnish  short  biographical  pre- 
faces. He  readily  undertook  the  task,  a  task  for  which  he 
was  preeminently  qualified.  His  knowledge  of  the  literary 
history  of  England  since  the  Restoration  was  unrivalled. 
That  knowledge  he  had  derived  partly  from  books,  and  partly 
from  sources  which  had  long  been  closed ;  from  old  Grub 
Street  traditions ;  from  the  talk  of  forgotten  poetasters  and 
pamphleteers  who  had  long  been  lying  in  parish  vaults ;  from 
the  recollections  of  such  men  as  Gilbert  Walmesley,  who 
had  conversed  with  the  wits  of  Button ;  Gibber,  who  had 
mutilated  the  plays  of  two  generations  of  dramatists  ; 
Orrery,  who  had  been  admitted  to  the  society  of  Swift ;  and 
Savage,  who  had  rendered  services  of  no  very  honorable 
kind  to  Pope.  The  biographer,  therefore,  sate  down  to  his 
task  with  a  mind  full  of  matter.  He  had  at  first  intended  to 
give  only  a  paragraph  to  every  minor  poet,  and  only  four 
or  five  pages  to  the  greatest  name.  But  the  flood  of  anec- 
dote and  criticism  overflowed  the  narrow  channel.  The 
work,  which  was  originally  meant  to  consist  only  of  a  few 
sheets,  swelled  into  ten  volumes  —  small  volumes,  it  is  true, 
and  not  closely  printed.  The  first  four  appeared  in  1779, 
the  remaining  six  in  1781. 

The  Lives  of  the  Poets  are,  on  the  whole,  the  best  of 
Johnson's  works.  The  narratives  are  as  entertaining  as  any 
novel.  The  remarks  on  life  and  on  human  nature  are  emi- 
nently shrewd  and  profound.  The  criticisms  are  often  ex- 
cellent, and,  even  when  grossly  and  provokingly  unjust,  well 
deserve  to  be  studied  ;  for,  however  erroneous  they  may  be, 
they  are  never  silly.  They  are  the  judgments  of  a  mind 
trammelled  by  prejudice  and  deficient  in  sensibility,  but  vig- 
orous and  acute.  They  therefore  generally  contain  a  por- 
tion of  valuable  truth  which  deserves  to  be  separated  from 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  857 

the  alloy  ;  and,  at  the  very  worst,  they  mean  something,  a 
praise  to  which  much  of  what  is  called  criticism  in  our  time 
has  no  pretensions. 

Savage's  Life  Johnson  reprinted  nearly  as  it  had  ap- 
peared in  1744.  Whoever,  after  reading  that  life,  will  turn 
to  the  other  lives,  will  be  struck  by  the  difference  of  style. 
Since  Johnson  had  been  at  ease  in  his  circumstances,  he  had 
written  little  and  had  talked  much.  When,  therefore,  he, 
after  the  lapse  of  years,  resumed  his  pen,  the  mannerism 
which  he  had  contracted  while  he  was  in  the  constant  habit  of 
elaborate  composition  was  less  perceptible  than  formerly ; 
and  his  diction  frequentlj'^  had  a  colloquial  ease  which  it  had 
formerly  wanted.  The  improvement  may  be  discerned  by  a 
skilful  critic  in  the  Journey  to  the  Hebrides,  and  in  the 
Lives  of  the  Poets  is  so  obvious  that  it  Cannot  escape  the 
notice  of  the  most  careless  reader. 

Among  the  Lives  the  best  are  perhaps  those  of  Cowley, 
Dryden,  and  Pope.  The  very  worst  is,  beyond  all  doubt, 
that  of  Gray. 

This  great  work  at  once  became  popular.  There  was, 
indeed,  much  just  and  much  unjust  censure :  but  even  those 
who  were  loudest  in  blame  were  attracted  by  the  book  in 
spite  of  themselves.  Malone  computed  the  gains  of  the 
publishers  at  five  or  six  thousand  pounds.  But  the  writer 
was  very  poorly  remunerated.  Intending  at  first  to  write 
very  short  prefaces,  he  had  stipulated  for  only  ^wo  hundred 
guineas.  The  booksellers,  when  they  saw  how  far  his  per- 
formance had  surpassed  his  promise,  added  only  another 
hundred.  Indeed,  Johnson,  though  he  did  not  despise,  or 
^affect  to  despise  money,  and  though  his  strong  sense  and 
long  experience  ought  to  have  qualified  him  to  protect  his 
own  interests,  seems  to  have  been  singularly  unskilful  and 
unlucky  in  his  literary  bargains.  He  was  generally  re- 
puted the  first  English  writer  of  his  time.  Yet  several 
writers  of  his  time  sold  their  copyrights  for  sums  such  as  he 


358  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

never  ventured  to  ask.  To  give  a  single  instance,  Robert- 
son received  four  thousand  five  hundred  pounds  for  the  His- 
tory of  Charles  V.,  and  it  is  no  disrespect  to  the  memory 
of  Robertson  to  say  that  the  History  of  Charles  V.  is  both 
a  less  valuable  and  less  amusing  book  than  the  Lives  of 

the  Poets. 

Johnson  was  now  in  his  seventy-second  year.    The  infirm- 
ities of  age  were  coming  fast  upon  him.     That  inevitable 
event,  of  which  he  never  thought  without  horror,  was  brought 
near  to  him  ;  and  his  whole  hfe  was  darkened  by  the  shadow 
of  death.     He  had  often  to  pay  the  cruel  price  of  longevity. 
Every  year  he  lost  what  could  never  be  replaced.     The 
strange  dependents  to  whom  he  had  given  shelter,  and  to 
whom,  in  spite  of  their  faults,  he   was  strongly  attached  by 
habit,  dropped  off  one  by  one ;  and,  in  the  silence  of  his 
home,  he  regretted  even  the  noise  of  their  scolding  matches. 
The  kind  and  generous  Thrale  was  no  more  ;  and  it  would 
have  been  well  if  his  wife  had  been  laid  beside  him.     But 
she  survived  to  be  the  laughing-stock  of  those  who  had  en- 
vied her,  and  to  draw  from  the  eyes  of  the  old  man  who  had 
loved  her  beyond  any  thing  in   the   world,  tears  far  more 
bitter  than  he  would  have  shed  over  her  grave.     With  some 
estimable,  and  many  agreeable  qualities,  she  was  not  made 
to  be  independent.     The  control  of  a  mind  more  steadfast 
than  her  own  was  necessary  to  her  respectability.     While 
she  was  retrained  by  her  husband,  a  man  of  sense  and 
firmness,  indulgent  to  her  taste  in  trifles,  but  always  the  un- 
disputed master  of  his  house,  her  worst  offences  had  been 
.impertinent  jokes,  white  lies,  and  short  fits  of  pettishness 
ending  in  sunny  good-humor.     But  he  was  gone  ;  and  she 
was  left  an  opulent  widow  of  forty,  with  strong  sensibility, 
volatile  fancy,  atid  slender  judgment.     She  soon  fell  in  love 
with  a  music-master  from  Brescia,  in  whom  nobody  but  her- 
self could  discover  any  thing  to  admire.     Her  pride,  and 
perhaps  some  better  feelings,  struggled   hard  against  this 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON.  359 

degrading  passion.  But  the  struggle  irritated  her  nerves, 
soured  her  temper,  and  at  length  endangered  her  health. 
Conscious  that  her  choice  was  one  which  Johnson  could  not 
approve,  she  became  desirous  ^o  escape  from  his  inspection. 
Her  manner  toward  him  changed.  She  was  sometimes  cold 
and  sometimes  petulant.  She  did  not  conceal  her  joy  when 
he  left  Streatham  :  she  never  pressed  him  to  return  ;  and, 
if  he  came  unbidden,  she  received  him  in  a  manner  which 
convinced  him  that  he  was  no  longer  a  welcome  guest.  He 
took  the  very  intelligible  hints  which  she  gave.  He  read, 
for  the  last  time,  a  chapter  of  the  Greek  Testament  in  the 
library  which  had  been  formed  by  himself.  In  a  solemn 
and  tender  prayer  he  commended  the  house  and  its  inmates 
to  the  Divine  protection,  and,  with  emotions  which  choked 
his  voice  and  convulsed  his  powerful  frame,  left  forever  that 
beloved  home  for  the  gloomy  and  desolate  house  behind 
Fleet  Street,  where  the  few  and  evil  days  which  still  re- 
mained to  him  were  to  run  out.  Here,  in  June,  1783,  he 
had  a  paralytic  stroke,  from  which,  however,  he  recovered, 
and  which  does  not  appear  to  have  at  all  impaired  his  intel- 
lectual faculties.  But  other  maladies  came  thick  upon  him. 
His  asthma  tormented  him  day  and  night.  Dropsical  symp- 
toms made  their  appearance.  While  sinking  under  a  com- 
plication of  diseases,  he  heard  that  the  woman  whose  friend- 
ship had  been  the  chief  happiness  of  sixteen  years  of  his 
life  had  married  an  Italian  fiddler;  that  all  London  was 
crying  shame  upon  her ;  and  that  the  newspapers  and  maga- 
zines were  filled  with  allusions  to  the  Ephesian  matron  and 
the  two  pictures  in  Hamlet.  He  vehemently  said  that  he 
would  try  to  forget  her  existence.  He  never  uttered  her 
name.  Every  memorial  of  her  which  met  his  eye  he  flung 
into  the  fire.  She,  meanwhile,  fled  from  the  laughter  and 
hisses  of  her  countrymen  and  countrywomen  to  a  land  where 
she  was  unknown,  hastened  across  Mount  Cenis,  and  learned, 
while  passing  a  merry  Christmas  of  concerts  and  lemonade 


360  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

parties  at  Milan,  that  the  great  man,  with  whose  name  hers 
is  inseparably  associated,  had  ceased  to  exist. 

He  had,  in  spite  of  much  mental  and  much  bodily  afflic- 
tion, clung  vehemently  to  life.  The  feeling  described  in 
that  fine  but  gloomy  paper  'which  closes  the  series  of  his 
Idlers  seemed  to  grow  stronger  in  him  as  his  last  hour  drew 
near.  '  He  fancied  that  he  should  be  able  to  draw  his  breath 
more  easily  in  a  southern  climate,  and  would  probably  have 
set  out  for  Rome  and  Naples  but  for  his  fear  of  the  expense 
of  the  journey.  That  expense,  indeed,  he  had  the  means  of 
defraying ;  for  he  had  laid  up  about  two  thousand  pounds, 
the  fruit  of  labors  which  had  made  the  fortune  of  several 
publishers.  But  he  was  unwilling  to  break  in  upon  this 
hoard,  and  he  seems  to  have  wished  even  to  keep  its  ex- 
istence a  secret.  Some  of  his  friends  hoped  that  the  gov- 
ernment might  be  induced  to  increase  his  pension  to  six 
hundred  pounds  a  year,  but  this  hope  was  disappointed,  and 
he  resolved  to  stand  one  English  winter  more.  That  winter 
was  his  last.  His  legs  grew  weaker;  liis  breath  grew 
shorter ;  the  fatal  water  gathered  fast,  in  spite  of  incisions 
which  he,  courageous  against  pain,  but  timid  against  death, 
urged  his  surgeons  to  make  deeper  and  deeper.  Though 
the  tender  care  which  had  mitigated  his  sufferings  during 
months  of  sickness  at  Streatham  was  withdrawn,  he  was  not 
left  desolate.  The  ablest  physicians  and  surgeons  attended 
him,  and  refused  to  accept  fees  from  him.  Burke  parted 
from  him  with  deep  emotion.  Windham  sate  much  in  the 
sick  room,  arranged  the  pillows,  and  sent  his  own  servant  to 
watch  at  night  by  the  bed.  Frances  Bumey,  whom  the  old 
man  had  cherished  with  fatherly  kindness,  stood  weeping  at 
the  door;  while  Langton,  whose  piety  eminently  qualified 
him  to  be  an  adviser  and  comforter  at  such  a  time,  received 
the  last  pressure  of  his  friend's  hand  within.  When  at 
length  the  moment,  dreaded  through  so  many  years,  came 
close,  the   dark   cloud  passed  away  from  .Johnson's  mind. 


SAMUEL   JOHJfSON.  361 

His  temper  became  unusually  patient  and  gentle ;  he  ceased 
to  think  with  terror  of  death,  and  of  that  which  lies  beyond 
death ;  and  he  spoke  much  of  the  mercy  of  God,  and  of  the 
propitiation  of  Christ.  In  this  serene  frame  of  mind  he 
died  on  the  13th  of  December,  1784.  He  was  laid,  a  week 
later,  in  Westminster  Abbey,  among  the  eminent  men  of 
whom  he  had  been  the  historian  —  Cowley  and  Denham, 
Diyden  and  Congreve,  Gay,  Prior,  and  Addison. 

Since  his  death  the  popularity  of  his  works  —  the  Lives 
of  the  Poets,  and,  perhaps,  the  Vanity  of  Human  Wishes, 
excepted  —  has  greatly  diminished.  His  Dictionary  has 
been  altered  by  editors  till  it  can  scarcely  be  calted  his. 
An  allusion  to  his  Rambler  or  his  Idler  is  not  readily  ap- 
prehended in  literary  circles.  The  fame  even  of  Rasselas 
has  grown  somewhat  dim.  But  though  the  celebrity  of  the 
writings  may  have  declined,  the  celebrity  of  the  writer, 
strange  to  say,  is  as  great  as  ever.  Boswell's  book  has 
done  for- him  more  than  the  best  of  his  own  books  could  do. 
The  memory  of  other  authors  is  kept  alive  by  their  works. 
But  the  memory  of  Johnson  keeps  many  of  his  works  alive. 
The  old  philosopher  is  still  among  us  in  the  brown  coat  with 
the  metal  buttons  and  the  shirt  which  ought  to  be  at  wash,  • 
blinking,  puffing,  rolling  his  head,  drumming  with  his  fingers, 
tearing  his  meat  like  a  tiger,  and  swallowing  his  tea  in 
oceans.  No  human  being  who  has  been  more  than  seventy 
years  in  the  grave  is  so  well-known  to  us.  And  it  is  but  just 
to  say  that  our  intimate  acquaintance  with  what  he  would 
himself  have  called  the  anfractuosities  of  his  intellect  and  of 
his  temper,  serves  only  to  strengthen  our  conviction  that  he 
was  both  a  great  and  a  good  man. 

31 


SIR   HUM1>HRY    DAVY. 


SiB*HuMPHRY  Davy  was  born  at  Penzance  on  the 
17th  of  December,  1778.  His  was  an  ardent  boyhood. 
Educated  in  a  manner  somewhat  irregular,  and  with  only 
the  ordinary  advantages  of  a  remote  country  town,  his 
talents  appeared  in  the  earnestness  with  which  he  cultivated 
at  once  the  most  various  branches  of  knowledge  and  specu- 
lation. He  was  fond  of  metaphysics ;  he  was  fond  of  ex- 
periment ;  he  was  an  ardent  student  of  nature ;  and  he 
possessed  at  an  early  age  poetic  powers,  which,  had  they 
been  cultivated,  would  in  the  opinion  of  competent  judges, 
have  made  him  as  eminent  in  literature  as  he  was  in  science. 
All  these  tastes  endured  throughout  life.  Business  could 
not  stifle  them,  —  even  the  approach  of  death  was  unable  to 
extinguish  them.  The  reveries  of  his  boyhood  on  the  sea- 
worn  cliffs  of  Mount's  Bay,  may  yet  be  traced  in  many  of 
the  pages  dictated  during  the  last  year  of  his  life  amidst  the 
ruins  of  the  Coliseum.  But  the  physical  sciences  —  those 
more  emphatically  called  at  that  time  chemical  —  speedily 
attracted  and  absorbed  his  most  earnest  attention.  The 
philosophy  of  the  imponderables  —  of  Light,  Heat,  and 
Electricity  —  was  the  subject  of  his  earliest,  and  also  that  of 
his  happiest  essays.  He  was  a  very  able  chemist  in  the' 
strictest  sense  of  the  word,  although  his  ardor  and  his  ra- 
pidity of  generalizing  might  seem  to  unfit  him,  in  some 
(862) 


Sm   HUMPHKT^DAVT.  '       363 

measure,  for  a  pursuit  which  requires  such  intense  watch- 
fulness with  regard  to  minutiae,  such  patient  weighing  of 
fractions  of  a  grain,  such  frequent  though  easy  calculations. 
To  Cavendish  and  Daltoh,  his  great  contemporaries  —  to 
whom  we  may  now  add  WoUaston  —  these  things  were  a 
pleasure  in  themselves ;  to  Davy  they  must  ever  have  been 
irksome  indispensables  to  the  discovery  of  truth.  But,  in 
fact,  Davy's  discoveries  were  almost  independent  of  such 
quantitative  details ;  numerical  relations,  and  harmony  of  pro- 
portion, did  not  affect  his  mind  with  pleasure,  which  possibly 
was  one  reason  of  his  deficient  appreciation  of  works  of  art, 
the  more  remarkable  from  his  poetic  temperament.  Dalton's 
doctrine  of  atomic  combinations  was,  slowly  and  doubtfully 
received  by  him,  whilst  WoUaston  perceived  its  truth  in- 
stantaneously. A  keener  relish  for  such  relations  might 
most  naturally  have  led  Davy  to  an  anticipation  of  Mr. 
Faraday's  notable  discovery  of  the  definite  character  of  elec- 
trical decomposition,  and  the  coincidence  of  the  Electro- 
chemical proportions  for  different  bodies  with  their  atomic 
weights. 

The  early  papers  of  Davy  refer  chiefly  to  Heat,  Light, 
and  Electricity.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  physicist,  more  than  a 
chemist.  Whilst  yet  a  surgeon's  apprentice  at  Penzance, 
he  satisfied  himself  of  the  immateriality  of  heat,  which  he 
illustrated  by  some  ingenious  experiments,  in  which,  con- 
curring unawares  with  the  conclusions  of  his  future  patron 
Rumford,  he  laid  one  foundation  of  his  promotion.  Re- 
moved to  a  sphere  of  really  scientific  activity  at  Clifton, 
under  Dr.  Beddoes,*  he  executed  those  striking  researches  in 
pneumatic  chemistry  and  the  physiological  effects  of  breathing 
various   gases,  which   gave    him    his   first   reputation ;    re- 


1  Davy  hit  oflF  his  principal's  character  in  a  single  sentence, — 
"  Beddoes  had  talents  which  would  have  exalted  him  to  the  pinnacle 
of  philosophical  eminence,  if  they  had  been  applied  with  discretion." 


364  NEW  BIOGEAPHIES. 

searches  so  arduous  and  full  of  risk  as  to  require  a  chemist 
in  the  vigor  of  life,  and  urged  by  an  unextinguishable  thirst 
for  discovery,  to  undertake  them.  Even  his  brilliant  dis- 
covery of  the  effects  of  inhaling 'nitrous  oxide  brought  no 
competitor  into  the  field ;  and  the  use  of  anaesthetics,  which 
might  naturally  have  followed  —  the  greatest  discovery  (if 
we  except,  perhaps,  that  of  vaccination)  for  the  relief  of 
suffering  humanity  made  in  any  age  —  was  delayed  for 
another  generation.  But  so  it  was  in  all  his  triumphs.  He 
never  seemed  to  drain  the  cup  of  discovery.  He  quaffed 
only  its  freshest  part.  He  felt  the  impulse  of  an  unlimited 
command  of  resources.  He  carried  on  rapidly,  and  seem- 
ingly without  order,  several  investigations  at  once.  As  in 
conversation  he  is  described  as  seeming  to  know  what  one 
was  going  to  say  before  uttering  it,  —  he  had  the  art  of  di- 
vining things  complex  and  obscure.  Seizing  on  results,  he 
left  to  others  the  not  inconsiderable  merit,  as  well  as  labor, 
of  pursuing  the  details.  Keenly  alive  as  he  was  to  the 
value  of  fame,  and  the  applause  which  his  talents  soon  ob- 
tained for  him,  he  left  enough  of  both  for  his  friends ;  his 
contemporaries,  as  well  as  his  successors,  were  enabled  to 
weave  a  chaplet  from  the  laurels  which  he  had  not  stooped 
to  gather. 

These  remarks  apply  quite  as  strongly  fo  his  discoveries 
in  the  laws  and  facts  of  electro-chemical  decomposition  — 
those  on  which  his  fame  most  securely  rests.  Promoted  in 
1801  to  a  situation  in  the  Laboratory  of  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion in  London,  he  attached  himself  to  the  study  of  galvan- 
ism in  the  interval  of  the  other  and  more  purely  chemical 
pursuits  which  the  duties  of  his  situation  required.  He 
had  already,  at  Clifton,  made  experiments  with  the  pile  of 
Volta,  and  taken  part  in  the  discussion  of  its  theory  and 
effects,  then  (as  we  have  seen)  so  actively  carried  on  in 
Britain.  In  his  papers  of  that  period  we  find  not  only 
excellent  experiments,  but  happy  and  just  reasoning.     The 


Sm  HUMPHBr  DAVY.  S65 

chemical  theory  of  the  pile  —  namely,  that  the  electrical 
eflFects  observed  by  Galvani  and  Volta  are  due  solely  or 
chiefly  to  the  chemical  action  of  the  fluid  element  on  the 
metals  —  was  more  strongly  embraced  by  him  then  than 
afterwards.  In  November,  1800,  he  concluded  that  "  the  pile 
of  Volta  acts  only  when  the  conducting  substance  between 
the  plates  is  capable  of  oxidating  the  zinc ;  and  that  in  pro- 
portion as  a  greater  quantity  of  oxygen  enters  into  combi- 
nation with  the  zinc  in  a  given  time,  so  in  proportion  is  the 
power  of  the  pile  to  decompose  water  and  to  give  the  shock 
greater."  He  concludes  that  "the  chemical  changes  con- 
nected with  "  oxidation  "  are  somehow  the  cause  of  the  elec- 
trical effect  it  produces."  ^  His  views  on  this  subject  under- 
went some  modification  afterwards.  In  his  Elements  of 
Gher^ical  Philosophy,  published  twelve  years  later,  we  find 
the  following  statement  of  his  opinions  on  the  subject :  — 
"  Electrical  effects  are  exhibited  by  the  same  bodies  acting 
as  masses,  which  produce  chemical  phenomena  when  acting 
by  their  particles ;  it  is,  therefore,  not  improbable  that  the 
primary  cause  of  both  may  be  the  same."  A  little  further 
on  he  adds  :  —  "  They,"  speaking  of  electrical  and  chemical 
energies,  "  are  conceived  to  be  distinct  phenomena,  but  pro- 
duced by  the  same  power  acting  in  the  one  case  on  masses, 
in  the  other  on  particles."  ^ 

In  1804,  Berzelius  had  published  in  conjunction  with 
Hisinger,  a  paper  on  Electro-chemical  Decompositions,  in 
which  he  insisted  on  the  general  fact,  that  alkalies,  earths, 

1  Works,  ii.,  162. 

2  Works,  iv.,  119.  In  his  Bakerian  lecture  (1806)  he  had  said,  "In 
the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  it  would  be  useless  to  attempt  to 
speculate  on  the  remote  cause  of  the  electrical  energy,  or  the  reason 
why  different  bodies,  after  being  brought  into  contact,  should  be 
found  differently  electrified ;  its  relation  to  chemical  afiinity  is,  how- 
ever, suflSciently  evident.  May  it  not  be  identical  with  it;  and  an 
essential  property  of  matter  ?  "  —  Works,  vol.  v.,  p.  39. 

SI* 


366  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  combustible  bodies  seem  to  be  attracted  to  the  negative 
pole,  and  oxygen  and  acids  to  the  positive.  He  also  showed 
that  the  subdivision  of  bodies  thus  obtained  was  only  a  rela- 
tive not  an  absolute  one ;  for  the  same  body  may  act  as  a 
base  to  a  second,  and  as  an  acid  to  a  third.  But  we  must 
observe  that  results  almost  similar  were  contained  in  the 
early  papers  of  Davy,  and  that  Berzelius  did  not  carry  out 
his  own  principle  so  far  as  to  lead  to  any  striking  discovery 
between  1803  (when  his  experiments  were  made)  and  1806, 
(the  date  of  Davy's  first  Bakerian  lecture,)  during  which 
time  the  science  of  Galvanism  or  Voltaism  made  little  real 
progress.  The  numerous  experimenters  engaged  with  it 
were  baffled  by  the  anomalous  chemical  results  obtained, 
and  by  the  appearance  of  decompositions  under  circum- 
stances wholly  unexpected,  such  as  appeared  to  threatep  the 
existence  of  some  of  the  best  established  chemical  truths. 
The  chemical  theory  of  the  pile,  at  first  so  plausible,  pre- 
sented new  difiicnlties,  and  Berzelius  having  for  a  while 
defended  it,  returned  to  the  simple  contact  theory  of  Volta. 
It  was  then  that  Davy  seriously  addressed  himself  to  the 
subject,  resolved  to  trace  to  their  source  every  chemical 
anomaly ;  and  this  he  effected  in  a  masterly  mannei',  in  his 
Bakerian  lecture  read  before  the  Royal  Society  in  1806.  In 
it  he  traces  the  unaccountable  results  of  his  predecessors  to 
impui'ities  in  the  materials  used  by  them,  or  to  those  of  the 
vessels  in  which  the  decompositions  were  made ;  and  he' 
brings  into  a  far  distincter  light  than  his  predecessors  had 
done,  the  power  of  the  galvanic  circuit  to  suspend  or  re- 
verse the  action  of  even  powerful  chemical  affinity  ;  "  differ- 
ent bodies  naturally  possessed  of  chemical  affinities  ap- 
pearing incapable  of  combining  or  remaining  in  combina- 
tion when  placed  in  a  state  of  electricity  different  from  their 
natural  order."  We  here  see  the  fundamental  doctrine  of 
the  electro-chemical  theory,  that  all  bodies  possess  a  place  in 
the  great  scale  of  natural  electrical  relations  to  one  another ; 


SIB   HUMPHRY   DAVY.  367 

that  chemical  relations  are  intimately  connected  with  this  elec- 
tric state,  and  are  suspended  or  reversed  by  its  alteration. 
In  the  interpretation  of  those  striking  experiments,  in 
which  he  caused  acids  to  pass  to  the  positive  pole  of  the 
battery  through  the  midst  of  alkaline  solutions,  and  the  con- 
verse, we  find  so  close  an  approach  to  the  theory  of  polar 
decomposition  as  enforced  by  the  discoveries  and  reasonings 
of  Mr.  Faraday,  that  it  seems  impossible  to  deny  to  Davy 
the  merit  of  having  first  perceived  these  curious  relations. 
"  It  is  very  natural,"  he  says,  "  to  suppose  that  the  repellant 
and  attractive  energies  are  communicated  from  one  particle 
to  another  particle  of  the  same  kind  so  as  to  establish  a 
conducting  chain  in  the  fluid,  and  that  the  locomotion  takes 
place  in  consequence ;  "  and  presently  adds,  "  there  may 
possibly  be  a  succession  of  decompositions  and  recomposi- 
tions  throughout  the  fluid.^  He  likewise  shows  (p.  21)  that 
the  decomposing  power  does  not  reside  in  the  wire  or  pole^ 
but  may  be  extended  indefinitely  through  a  fluid  medium 
capable  of  conducting  electricity.  Mr.  Faraday's  experi- 
ments, which  led  him  to  discard  the  term  pole,  lead  to  the 
same  conclusion,  and  are  of  the  same  character.  A  few 
pages  further  on  in  this  same  Bakerian  lecture,  Davy 
observes  (p.  42),  that,  "  allowing  that  combination  depends* 
on  a  balance  of  the  natural  electrical  enei'gies  of  bodies, 
it  is  easy  to  conceive  that  a  measure  may  be  found  of  the 
artificial  energies  as  to  intensity  and  quantity  capable  of 
destroying  this  equilibrium ;  and  such  a  measure  would 
enable  us  to  make  a  scale  of  electrical  powers  corresponding 
to  degrees  of  affinity."  Here  we  see  the  acute  presentiment 
of  the  beautiful  discovery  of  the  definiteness  of  electrical  de- 
compositions ;  as  in  the  concluding  portion  of  the  same  remark- 
able paper  we  find  a  clear  anticipation  of  natural  electrical 
currents  to  be  discovered  in  mineral,  and  especially  metalif- 

1  Of  the  Bakerian  Lecture,  in  his  collected  Works,  p.  29. 


368  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

erous  deposits,  since  established  by  Mr.  R.  W.  Fox,  and  of 
the  agency  of  feeble  electric  energies,  long  continued,  in 
effecting  geological  changes,  and  in  producing  insoluble 
combinations  of  earths  and  metals,  so  ingeniously  confirmed 
by  the  beautiful  and  direct  experiments  of  Becquerel. 

The  sequel  to  this  remarkable  paper,  read  to  the  Royal 
Society  in  November,  1807,  contained  the  splendid  appli- 
cation of  the  principle  and  methods  which  it  described, 
to  the  decomposition  of  the  alkalies  and  to  the  discovery  of 
their  singular  bases,  —  substances  possessing  the  lustre 
and  malleability  of  metals,  yet  so  light  as  to  float  upon 
water,  and  having  the  extraordinary  property  of  becoming 
inflamed  in  contact  with  ice.  Potassium  was  discovered  in 
the  Laboratory  of  the  Royal  Institution  on  the  6th  October, 
1807,  and  sodium  a  few  days  later.  The  battery  used  con- 
tained 250  pairs  of  plates  of  six  and  four  inches  square. 
Such  success  was  fitted  to  charm  a  disposition  like  that  of 
Davy,  and  more  than  reward  him  for  all  his  toils.  To  have 
discovered  two  new  bodies,  and  opened  an  entirely  new  field 
of  wide  chemical  research,  would  itself  have  been  enough. 
But  the  extraordinary  properties  of  the  new  bases  were 
such  as  seemed  to  correspond  to  the  lively  imagination  of 
*the  chemist  who  produced  them,  and  to  transport  him  to  an 
Aladdin's  palace  more  brilliant  than  ever  his  fertile  im- 
agination had  ever  conceived.  Yet  it  is  pleasing  to  remem- 
ber that  these  popular  discoveries  followed,  at  the  interval 
of  a  year,  the  patient  and  able  researches  which  led  him  to 
them,  and  which  had  already  been  rewarded,  at  a  period  of 
the  bitterest  international  hostilities  by  the  scientific  prize  of 
3,000  francs,  founded  by  the  Emperor  Napoleon.^ 

The  genius  displayed  in  these,  Davy's  most  celebrated 

1  Such  was  the  national  feeling  at  this  time  in  England,  <hat  worthy 
people  were  found  who  considered  Davy  as  almost  a  traitor,  when  he 
accepted  the  French  prize.     See  Southey's  Life, 


SIK   HUMPHKT   DAVY.  369 

researches,  is  evident  on  a  careful  perusal  of  his  papers ; 
but  still  more  from  a  consideration  of  the  state  of  science 
at  the  time,  and  of  the  willing  tribute  to  his  nferits  paid  by 
the  ablest  of  his  contemporaries.  Few  persons  of  the 
present-  day  will  venture  to  controvert  the  assertion  of  his 
acute  contemporary,  Dr.  Thomas  Young  (than  whom  no 
man  was  ever  a  less  indiscriminate  eulogist),  that  Davy's 
researches  were  "  more  splendidly  successful  than  any  which 
have  ever  before  illustrated  the  physical  sciences,  in  any  of 
their  departments  ;"  and  that  the  contents  of  the  Bakerian 
Lectures,  in  particular,  "  are  as  much  superior  to  those  of 
Newton's  Optics,  as  the  Principia  are  superior  to  these  or 
any  other  human  work."  ^  A  not  less  impartial  tribute  to 
his  superlative  genius  has  been  yielded  by  M.  Dumas,  who, 
if  I  mistake  not,  has  described  Davy  as  being  the  ablest 
and  most  successful  chemist  who  ever  lived.  A  similar 
homage  is  paid  to  him  by  the  sagacious  Cuvier. 

It  is  not  within  our  scope  to  consider  minutely  Davy's 
purely  chemical  discoveries  and  experiments,  though  they 
were  numerous«and  important,  independently  of  those  made 
with  the  aid  of  electricity.  His  proofs  of  the  elementary 
nature  of  chlorine  and  iodine  were  amongst  the  most  con- 
siderable in  their  results.  But  as  a  mere  analyst,  Davy 
had  neither  the  leisure  nor  the  taste  for  continuous  plodding 
labor,  and  he  therefore  naturally  made  mistakes  in  chemical 
details.  His  Elements  of  Chemical  Philosophy  remained, 
in  consequence,  a  fragment  of  an  extensive  work.  His 
contemporary,  BerzeUus,  following  his  steps  in  electro-chem- 
ical discovery,  attained  far  greater  address,  and  became  an 
author  of  high  and  merited  reputation,  whilst  his  school 
surpassed  all  others  in  Europe  in  producing  accomplished 
analysts.^ 
■ 

^  Quarterly  Review,  No.  15. 

2  Jons  Jacob  BerzeUus,  the  greatest  analytical  chemist  of  his  day, 
was  bom  in  East  Gothland,  in  the  same  year  with  Davy,  and  died  in 


370  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

The  years  immediately  following  the  publication  of  his 
Bakerian  Lectures  were  passed  by  Davy  in  the  unenvied 
possession  of  the  highest  fame,  and  in  the  tranquil  further- 
ance of  his  first  and  greatest  discoveries.  His  lectures  at 
the  Royal  Institution  continued  to  be  one  of  the  most 
fashionable  resorts  in  London,  and  he  was  freely  admitted 
in  return  into  the  most  aristocratic  society ;  he  had  but  to 
express  a  wish,  and  a  voltaic  battery  of  no  less  than  2,000 
pairs,  containing  128,000  square  inches  of  surface,  was  con- 
structed for  his  use,  by  means  of  a  liberal  subscription. 
His  health,  when  seriously  compromised  by  the  severity  of 
his  labors,  was  a  matter  of  public  concern,  and  its  variations 
were  announced  by  frequent  bulletins.  The  copyright  of 
his  lectures  on  agriculture  was  sold  for  a  price  unexampled 
perhaps  before  or  since  for  such  a  work.  In  1812,  he  was 
knighted  by  the  Prince  Regent,  and  soon  after  he  married 
a  lady  of  fortune  and  accomplishments.  His  duties  at  the 
Royal  Institution  became  thenceforth  honorary.  He  had  in 
a  space  of  ten  years  attained  the  pinnacle  of  scientific  repu- 
tation, and  he  was  for  the  time  truly  happjf —  unenvious  of 
others  —  deeply  attached  to  his  relatives  —  generous  of  his 
resources  —  unwearied  in  his  philosophic  labors.  A  certain 
change  (it  must  with  regret  be  owned)  came  over  his  state 
of  mind,  tarnished  his  serenity,  and  gradually,  though  im- 
perceptibly, weakened  his  scientific'  zeal.  It  was  to  be 
ascribed  solely,  we  believe,  to  the  severe  ordeal  of  exuber- 
ant but  heartless  popularity  which  he  underwent  in  London. 
The  flatteries  of  fashionable  life  actfrig  on  a  young,  ardent, 
and  most  susceptible  mind,  minghng  first  with  the  graver 
applause  of  his  philosophic  compeers,  and  at  length,  by  their 
reiteration  and  seductions  quite  overpowering  it,  by  degrees 

1848,  when  he  had  almost  completed  his  69th  year.  He*  contributed, 
in  a  signal  manner,  to  the  establishment  of  Dalton's  principle  of  de- 
finite chemical  equivalents  ;  but  he  made  no  single  discovery  of  com- 
manding importance. 


SIR    HUMPHRY   DAVY.  371 

attached  Davy  to  the  fashionable  world,  and  loosened  his 
ties  to  that  laboratory  which  had  once  been  to  him  the  sole 
and  fit  scene  of  his  triumphs.  Had  he  been  blessed  with  a 
family  his  course  would  have  been  evener  and  happier. 
Let  us  not  severely  criticize,  where  we  still  find  so  much  to 
admire  and  imitate.  But  we  record  the  fact,  for  the  conso- 
lation of  those  who,  beginning  the  pursuit  of  science,  as 
Davy  did,  in  a  humble  sphere,  and  with  pure  ardor,  may 
fancy  that  they  are  worthy  of  pity,  if  they  do  not  attain  with 
him  the  honors  of  wealth  and  title,  and  the  homage,  grateful 
to  talent,  of  rank,  wit,  and  beauty. 

A  reseai'ch,  second  perhaps  only  to  his  electro-chemical 
discoveries,  remains  to  be  noticed,  as  the  chief  fruit  of  the 
third  period  of  his  life,  on  which  we  now  enter,  the  first 
being  his  early  C&reer  before  settling  in  Londoij ;  the  second 
that  passed  in  the  Royal  Institution. 

The  subject  was,  the  laws  of  combustion,  and  the  happy 
invention  of  the  safety-lamp.  Though  intimately  connected 
with  the  doctrine  of  simple  heat,  it  may,  most  properly,  from 
its  chemical  character,  and  from  its  connection  with  Davy's 
history,  be  considered  briefly  here.  The  lamentable  losp  of 
life  occurring  in  coal-mines  from  explosions  of  fire-damp  or 
inflammable  air  disengaged  from  the  workings,  had  for  many 
years  attracted  the  attention  and  sympathy  of  the  public, 
and  had  likewise  been  carefully  considered  by  scientific  men. 
The  explosive  gas  was  known  to  be  the  light  carburetted 
hydrogen.  Two  plans  alone  seemed  to  present  themselves 
for  diminishing  the  danger  :  —  the  one  to  remove,  or  chemi- 
cally to  decompose  the  fire-damp  altogether ;  the  other  to 
provide  a  miner's  lamp  which,  by  its  construction,  should  be 
incapable  of  causing  explosion.  The  former  of  these  modes 
of  protection,  it  was  soon  seen,  could  only  be  palliative  ;  the 
only  eflBcient  form  which  it  took,  was  that  of  a  more  eflfectual 
ventilation  ;  but  the  terrific  rapidity  with  which  a  mine  may 
be  suddenly  pervaded  by  fire-damp,  from  channels  opened 


872  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

by  a  single  pick-axe,  must  prevent  it  from  ever  acting  as  a 
cure.  The  latter  plan  had  as  yet  yielded  nothing  more  ef- 
fectual than  the  steel  mill  long  used  by  miners,  which  pro- 
duced an  uncertain  and  intermitting  light,  by  the  rotation  of 
a  steel  wheel  against  a  flint,  the  scintillations  of  which  were 
incapable  of  inflaming  the  fire-damp.  The  insufficiency  of 
the  light  prevented  it  from  being  used,  except  in  circum- 
stances of* known  danger.  The  celebrated  Baron  Humboldt, 
Dr.  Clanny,  and  several  others,  had  invented  safety-lamps 
on  different  principles  ;  but  they  were  all  clumsy  and  more 
or  less  ineffectual.^ 

At  last,  in  the  summer  of  1815,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Gray 
afterwards  Bishop  of  Bristol,  then  chairman  of  a  com- 
mittee appointed  by  a  benevolent  association  at  Bishop 
Wearmouth  for  the  prevention  of  colHery  accidents,  applied 
to  Davy,  who  was  then  on  a  sporting  tour  in  Scotland,  re- 
questing his  advice  and  assistance.  Sir  Humphry  answered 
the  call  with  promptitude.  On  his  southward  journey,  in 
the  latter  part  of  August,  he  visited  the  collieries,  ascer- 
tained the  circumstances  of  the  danger  which  he  had  to 
meet,  and  was  provided  by  Mr.  Buddie  with  specimens  of 
the  inflammable  air  for  examination.  Within  a  fortnight 
after  his  return  to  London,  he  had  ascertained  new  and  im- 
portant qualities  of  the  substance,  and  had  already  four 
schemes  on  hand  for  the  prevention  of  accident.  Before  the 
end  of  October  he  had  arrived  at  the  following  principles  of 
operation  in  connection  with  the  safety -lamp.  "  First,  a  cer- 
tain mixture  of  azote  and  carbonic  acid  prevents  the  explo- 
sion of  the  fire-damp,  and  this  mixture  is  necessarily  formed 
•in  the  safe-lantern.  Secondly,  the  fire-damp  will  not  explode 
in  tubes  or  feeders  of  a  certain  small  diameter.    The  ingress 

1  I  have  spoken  in  art.  393  [of  the  Dissertation]  of  the  independent 
and  ingenious  efforts  of  (Jeorge  Stephenson  towards  the  invention  of 
a  safety-lamp  contemporaneously  with  those  of  Davy. 


SIR    HUMPHRY    DAVY.  373 

to,  and  egress  of  air  from  my  lantern,"  he  adds,  "  is  through 
such  tubes  or  feeders ;  and,  therefore,  when  any  explosion 
is  artificially  made  iu  the  safe-lantern,  it  does  not  communi- 
cate to  the  external  air."  The  effect  of  narrow  tubes  in 
intercepting  the  passage  of  flame,  is  due  to  the  cooling 
effect  of  their  metallic  sides  upon  the  combustible  gases  of 
which  flame  is  composed ;  ^  and  one  of  his  first  and  most 
important  observations  was  the  fortunate  peculiarity  that 
fire-damp,  even  when  mixed  with  the  amount  of  air  most 
favorable  to  combustion,  (one  part  of  gas  to  seven  or  eight 
of  air,)  requires  an  unusually  high  temperature  to  induce 
combustion.  Olefiant  gas,  carbonic  oxide,  and  sulphuretted 
hydrogen,  ai"e  all  inflamed  by  iron  at  a  red  heat,  or  ignited 
charcoal,  but  carburetted  hydrogen  does  not  take  fire  under 
a  perfect  white  heat.  The  earliest  safety-lamp  consisted  of 
a  lantern  with  horn  or  glass  sides,  in  which  a  current  of  air 
to  supply  the  flame  was  admitted  below  by  numerous  tubes 
of  small  diameter,  or  by  narrow  interstices  between  concen- 
tric tubes  of  some  length ;  or,  finally,  by  rows  of  parallel 
partitions  of  metal,  forming  rcQtangular  canals  extremely 
narrow  in  proportion  to  their  length.  A  similar  system  of 
escape  apertures  was  applied  at  the  top  of  the  lantern. 

With  characteristic  ingenuity,  Davy  did  not  stop  here. 
He  continued  to  reduce  at  once  the  apertures  and  length  of 
his  metallic  guards,  until  it  occurred  to  him  that  wire  gauze 
might,  with  equal  effect  and  far  more  convenience,  act  upon 
the  temperature  of  flame,  so  as  to  reduce  it  below  the  point 
of  ignition,  and  thus  effectually  stop  its  communication. 
The  experiment  was  successful,  and  by  the  9th  of  Novem- 
ber, 1815,  or  within  about  ten  weeks  after  his  first  experi4 
ments,  an   account   of   the   safety-lamp  defended   by  wire 

1  This  fact  had  been  ascertained  some  years  previously,  by  Mr. 
T<^nant  and  Dr.  Wollaston,  bat  it  remained  unpublished,  and  was 
not  applied  by  them  to  the  prevention  of  colliery  explosions. 
32 


374  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

gauze  was  presented  to  the  Royal  Society.  About  two 
months  later  he  produced  a  lamp  entirely  enveloped  in  me- 
tallic tissue. 

There  are  none  of  Davy's  researches  which  will  stand 
a  closer  scrutiny  than  those  which  terminated  thus  success- 
fully.    No   fortuitous   observation   led   him   to   conceive   a 
happy  idea  and  apply  it  to  practice.     A  great  boon  to  hu- 
manity aiid  the  arts  was  required  at  his  hands ;  and  with- 
out a  moment's  delay,  he  proceeded  to  seek  for  it  under  the 
guidance  of  a  strictly  experimental  and  inductive  philoso- 
phy.    Without,  perhaps,  a  single  false  turn,  and  scarcely  a 
superfluous  experiment,  he  proceeded  straight  to  his  goal, 
guided  by  the  promptings  of  a  happy  genius  aided  by  no 
common  industry.     The  chemical,  the  mechanical,  and  the 
purely  physical  parts  of  the  problem  were  all  in  turn  dealt 
with,  and  with  equal  sagacity.     It  may  safely  be  affirmed 
that  he  who  was  destitute  of  any  one  of  these  qualifications 
must  have  failed  in  obtaining  the  object  so  ardently  desired, 
unless  by  the  aid  of  some  rare  good  fortune.     We  have  it 
on  Davy's  own  authority,  that  none  of  his  discoveries  gave 
him  so  much  pleasure  as  this  one.     His  whole  character 
possessed  in  it  much  of  a  sympathizing  and  generous  hu- 
manity ;  his  ideas  of  the  dignity  of  science  were  from  the 
first,  as  his  researches  in  Dr.  Beddoes'  laboratory  showed, 
intimately  connected  with  the  aim  of  advancing  the  welfare, 
and  of  diminishing  the  misfortunes  of  mankind :  the  rapid- 
ity and  singular  success  of  his  investigation  in  the  case  of 
the  safety-lamp,  kept  his  ardent  soul  all  alive,  and  afforded 
him  the  triumph  of  a  Eureka  at  its  completion.     To  tliese 
^wources   of   inward   gratification    was   added    the   unstinted 
meed  of   praise  bestowed  on  him  by  his   contemporaries. 
Playfair,  "  the  true  and  amiable  philosopher,"  as  Davy  long 
before  described  him,  thus  proclaimed   his  victory  in   the 
Edinhurgh  Review  :  —  After  describing  the  course  of  a  dis- 
covery "  which  is  in  no  degree  the  effect  of  accident,"  he 


SIR    HUMPHRY    DAVY.  375 

adds,  "  this  is  exactly  such  a  case  as  we  should  choose  to 
place  before  Bacon,  were  he  to  revisit  the  earth,  in  order  to 
give  him,  in  a  s^pall  compass,  an  idea  of  the  advancement 
which  philosophy  has  made  since  the  time  when  he  had 
pointed  out  to  her  the  route  which  she  ought  to  pursue. 
The  result  is  as  wonderful  as  it  is  important.  An  invisible 
and  impalpable  barrier  made  effectual  against  a  force 
the  most  violent  and  irresistible  in  its  operations ;  and 
a  power  that  in  its  tremendous  effects  seemed  to  emulate  the 
lightning  and  the  earthquake,  confined  within  a  narrow 
space,  and  shut  up  in  a  net  of  the  most  slender  texture,  — 
are  facts  which  must  excite  a  degree  of  wonder  and  aston- 
ishment, from  which  neither  ignorance  nor  wisdom  can  de- 
fend the  beholder." 

For  this  truly  patriotic  labor,  the  only  national  testimony 
which  Davy  received  was  the  inadequate  one  of  a  baronetcy 
which  was  conferred  on  him  by  the  Prince  Regent  in  1818 ; 
but  his  real  triumph  and  great  reward  were  in  the  enthusi- 
astic appreciation  of  his  entire  success  by  those  on  whom  he 
had  disinterestedly  conferred  so  great  a  benefit.  A  testi- 
monial, in  the  form  of  a  service  of  plate^of  great  value, 
was  presented  to  him  by  the  coal-owners  of  the  north  of 
England. 

Davy's  researches  on  fiame  were  intimately  connected 
with  his  electrical  and  chemical  discoveries.  He  remodelled 
Lavoisier's  theory  of  combustion,  and  put  an  end  to  the  dis- 
tinction between  combustibles  and  supporters  of  combustion. 
Chemical  combination,  effected  with  great  energy,  and  ac- 
companied by  a  high  temperature,  is  essential  to  combustion, 
and  either  elemen||^f  the  combination  is  equally  entitled 
to  the  denomination  of  combustible.  Guided  by  the  electro- 
chemical theory,  Davy  appears  to  have  thought  that  the 
heat  of  fiame  has  an  electrical  origin. 

But  I  must  hasten  to  close  this  section.  Among  the 
labors  of  his  latter  years,  there  was  none  which  interested 


376  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

Davy  more,  or  which  reasonably  promised  more  useful  re- 
sults, than  his  plan  for  protecting  the  copper  sheathing  of 
ships  from  the  corrosive  action  of  sea-^ater,  by  affixing 
plates  of  zinc  or  iron,  which  should  render  the  copper 
slightly  electro-negative,  and  thus  indispose  it  for  combining 
with  acid  principles.  It  is  a  somewhat  singular  fact,  that 
Fabbroni,  about  thirty  years  before,  had  instanced  the  cor- 
rosion of  copper  sheathing  near  the  contact  of  heterogene- 
ous metals,  as  an  instance  of  the  chemical  origin  of  galvan- 
ism.-^ Davy's  experiments  were  conducted  with  his  usual 
skill  and  success,  and  the  remedy  only  failed  of  gsneral 
adoption  on  account,  it  may  be  said,  of  being  too  effectual, 
other  and  opposite  injurious  effects  having  been  found  to 
arise. 

Davy  was  elected  President  of  the  Royal  Society  in 
1820,  in  the  room  of  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  who  had  held  the 
office  for  forty-two  years.  It  was  a  distinguished  compli-. 
ment,  for  the  election  was  all  but  unanimous.  He  continued 
to  communicate  papers  for  several  years  subsequently ;  but 
his  energy,  his  temper,  and,  finally,  his  healt-h  began  to  give 
way,  showing  t^at  the  ardent  labors  of  his  youth  and  prime 
had  injured  his  constitution.  Attacked  with  paralysis  in 
1827,  he  spent  his  last  years  chiefly  abroad,  and  died  at 
Geneva  (where  he  was  buried),  on  the  29th  May,  1829. 

The  character  of  Davy  was  a  rare  and  admirable  com- 
bination. The  ardor  of  his  researches,  and  the  deep  devo- 
tion of  his  whole  being  to  scientific  investigation,  have  been 
already  pAved.  They  had  the  effect  of  completely  annihi- 
lating every  baser  passion.  He  valued  property  only  in  so 
far  as  he  could  apply  it  usefully ;  and  Jus  disinterestedness 
with  respect  to  the  fortunes  which  several  of  his  practical 
discoveries  might  have  honorably  earned,  was  one  of  the 

1  There  appears,  however,  to  have  been  somethfng  erroneous  in  tlia 
details  of  Fabbroni's  observations,  or  at  least  in  the  account  of  them 
given  in  Nicliolson's  Journal. 


SIR    HUMPHRY    DAVY.  377 

most  Striking  parts  of  his  character.  His  fancy  was  dis- 
cursive to  a  degree  rarely  met  with  in  men  of  science.  He 
continued  to  write  poetry  nearly  all  his  life,  and  the  .tone  of 
it  was  that  of  grave  speculation,  always  reverting  to  the 
destiny  of  man  and  the  beneficence  of  the  Creator.  His 
lectures  were  composed  with  care ;  and  their  effect,  even  as 
pieces  of  oratory,  was  striking.  Coleridge  frequented  them 
"  to  increase  his  stock  of  metaphors ; "  yet  they  were  always 
to  the  point,  and  never  degenerated  into  rhetorical  display. 
For  a  man  of  such  extraordinary  liveliness  of  fancy  and 
impetuosity  of  action,  his  mistakes  were  astonishingly  few. 
After  his  very  first  experience,  his  publications  were  made 
with  great  care  and  judgment.  His  estimates  of  his  con- 
temporaries appear  generally  to  have  been  fair  and  liberal, 
though  it  would  be  incorrect  to  affinn  that  h§  was  univer- 
sally popular  among  them.  The  combination  of  isolated 
and  intense  occupation  in  his  laboratory,  with  excitement  in 
the  mixed  society  of  an  admiring  London  public,  was  a  trial 
which  few,  if  any,  could  have  escaped  better  than  he  did ; 
and  so  far  as  we  can  judge  of  a  man  from  his  expressed 
opinion  of  his  own  successes,  whether  recorded  in  his  works 
or  in  his  intimate  correspondence,  Davy  miist  be  accounted 
to  have  acquitted  himself  gracefully  and  well.  He  always 
spoke  of  the  Pile  of  Volta  as  the  first  source  of  his  own 
success.  "  Nothing  tends  so  much  to  the  advancement  of 
knowledge  as  the  application  of  a  new  instrument,"  he 
says ;  and  then  adds,  "  The  native  intellectual  powers  of 
men  in  different  times  are  not  so  much  the  caifses  of  the 
different  success  of  their  labors,  as  the  peculiar  nature  of 
the  means  and  artificial  resources  in  their  possession ; "  a 
proposition  which  he  applies  to  his  own  discoveries.  But  we 
may  truly  say  with  one  of  his  biographers,  that  to  him 
"  the  Voltaic  apparatus  was  the  golden  branch  by  which  he 
subdued  the  spirits  that  had  opposed  the  advance'  of  previ- 
ous philosophers ;  but  what  would  its  possession  have 
32* 


878  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

availed  him  had  not   his  genius,  like  the   ancient  sibyls, 
pointed  out  its  use  and  application  ?  " 

The  last,  and  not  least,  extraordinary  characteristic  of 
Davy  to  which  I  shall  now  adveirt,  was  the  highly  practical 
turn  of  a  mind  which  seemed  formed  in  a  speculative  mould. 
Four  at  least  of  his  chief  researches  were  of  this  kind  — 
his  experiments  in  breathing  the  gases ;  his  lectures  on  agri- 
cultural chemistry ;  his  invention  of  the  safety -lamp  ;  and 
his  protectors  for  ships.  No  man,  whose  path  so  clearly  lay 
in  original  discovery,  ever  left  so  many  valuable  legacies  to 
art  and  to  his  country. 


DAVID    HUME. 


David  Hume,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  historians  and 
philosophers  of  Great  Britain,  has  already  been  twice  no- 
ticed in  the  Preliminary  Dissertations^  where  the  principal 
doctrines  of  his  metaphysics  have  been  considered  by 
Stewart,  and  those  of  his  ethics  by  Mackintosh.  This,  hap- 
pily, exempts  the  writer  of  the  present  arttele  from  touching 
on  the  same  topics,  except  incidentally.  But  as  the  life  and 
character  of  other  celebrated  men,  no  less  prominent  in  the 
Dissertations,  have  been  formally  treated  in  the  body  of  this 
work,  it  seemed  due  to  the  memory  of  Hume  to  give  his 
biography  a  little  more  fully  than  in  the  few  paragraphs 
dedicated  to  him  in  the  previous  editions ;  and  the  following 
sketch  has  therefore  been  inserted.  It  will  be  restricted  to 
a  brief  account  of  his  life  and  genius,  an  estimate  of  his 
merits  as  a  writer,  and  probably  a  glance  at  one  or  two  of 
such  of  his  philosophical  opinions  as  were  too  remote  from 
the  design  of  either  Dissertation  to  challenge  notice  there, 
but  yet  may  seem  of  sufficient  importance  to  be  referred  to. 

Hume  has  left  us  a  very  short  autobiographic  sketch  of 
his  own  life ;  it  is  too  scanty,  too  bare  of  details,  to  inspire 
the  interest  which  belongs  to  some  similar  memoirs,  —  that 
of  Gi0l5»on  for  example.  But  though  it  is  little  more  than  a 
catalogue  of  dates  and  facts,  the  author  offers  a  good  apology 

1  To  the  Encyclopsedia  Britannica. 

(379) 


380  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

for  his  conciseness :  "  It  is  difficult,"  he  says,  "  for  a  man  to 
speak  long  of  himself  without  vanity."  He  assures  the 
reader  that  the  notice  shall  contain  little  more  than  the  his- 
tory of  his  writings,  and  he  has  kept  his  word.  From  all 
danger  of  vanity  in  treating  such  topics  —  however  delicat* 
for  an  author  —  he  flattered  himself  he  had  security  in  his 
early  failures :  "  The  first  success  of  my  writings,"  says 
he,  "  was  not  such  as  to  be  an  object  of  vanity."  Yet  the 
acerbity  with  which  at  that  so  distant  day  he  remembers 
and  records  the  slow  steps  by  which  he  had  emerged  from 
obscurity  into  fame,  and  which  all  that  fame  had  not  been 
able  to  soothe,  would  seem  to  indicate  that  the  philosopher 
had  not  quite  so  effectually  mortified  his  vanity  as  he  im- 
agined. The  tardy  homage  which  the  public  paid  to  his 
merits  is  a  theme  to  which  he  never  tired  of  recurring, 
thou^,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  sequel,  not  very  reasonably.^ 

He  was  born  at  Edinburgh,  April  26,  1711.  His  father 
\^^  a  scion  of  the  house  of  the  Earl  of  Home,  or  Hume,  as, 
the  name  was  often  spelt,  and  as  our  philosopher,  in  oppo- 
sition to  his  brother's  orthographic  heterodoxy,  always  per- 
sisted in  spelling  it.  His  mother  was  daughter  of  Sir 
David  Falconer,  president  of  the  College  of  Justice.  His 
father  died  when  he  was  a  child  ;  his  mother,  of  whom  he 
speaks  in  the  fondest  terms,  was  long  spared  to  him,  and  well 
deserved  the  tribute  of  affection  he  pays  her.  "  Though 
young  and  handsome,  she  devoted  herself  entirely  to  the 
rearing  and  education  of  her  children."  At  the  age  of 
fifteen  he  was  sent  to  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  and  he 
tells  us,  what  none  will  doubt,  that  he  passed  through  the 

1  "  Every  new  edition  was  only  an  acknowlcflgment  of  the  injustice 
which  had  been  done  him,  and  a  poor  instalment  of  his  just  dues.  .  .  . 
Hume  at  last  wore  out  the  patience  of  his  very  publisher,"  {Ed.  Rev. 
Jan.  1847).  "As  to  the  approbation  or  esteem  of  those  blockheads 
who  call  themselves  the  public,"  thus  ho  writes  (1767)  "and  whom  a 
bookseller,  a  lord,  a  priest,  or  a  party  can  guide,  I  do  most  heartily 
despise  it." 


DAVID    HUME.  381 

usual  "  course  of  education  with  success ; "  though  his  read- 
ing was  marked  at  that  time  —  and  as  regards  the  classics, 
was  always  marked  —  rather  by  extent  than  by  accurate 
scholarship.  Even  at  that  early  age  he  was  possessed  with 
an  intense  love  of  literature,  and  by  that  ambition  of  literary 
distinction  which  was  the  ruling  passion,  not  to  say  the  only 
passion,  of  his  life.  Seldoro,  if  ever,  has  the  propensity  U 
a  studious  life  developed  itself  so  early  or  so  exclusively,  o- 
asserted  its  claims  so  imperiously.  From  the  very  first,  and 
all  along,  it  overmastered  every  thing  in  the  shape  of  pleas- 
ure or  interest  that  could  be  brought  into  competition  with  it. 
As  a  younger  brother,  and  a  younger  brother  of  no  opu- 
lent house,  he  was,  of  course,  to  carve  out  his  own  fortunes 
in  the  world.  "  My  patrimony,"  he  says,  "  after  the  manner 
of  my  country,  was  but  slender ; "  yet  no  lures,  no  exigen- 
cies could  induce  him  to  seek  fortune  at  the  expense  of 
literature.  In  this  case,  the  phlegm  of  the  young  philos- 
opher seemed,  in  its  way,  as  immovable  as  the  enthusiasm 
of  a  young  poet  frequently  proves ;  he  could  not,  as  the 
world  would  say,  calculate  consequences.  To  add  to  the 
wonder,  Hume  was  most  creditably  anxious  of  independ- 
ence, and  resolved,  at  whatever  costs  of  economy,  to  pos- 
sess it.  Nay,  as  his  after-life  showed,  our  philosopher  was 
by  no  means  insensible  to  the  advantages  of  wealth  ;  never- 
theless, he  was  unwilling  to  adopt  any  course  to  attain 
riches  at  the  expense  of  those  literary  pursuits  which  must 
more  frequently  conduct  to  penury.  Thus  all  the  schemes 
his  friends  formed  on  his  behalf  were  frustrated  by  this  one 
passion.  His  "  studious  habits,  sobriety,  and  industry,  led 
them  to  wish  that  he  should  devote  himself  to  the  law,"  in 
which  surely  these  qualities,  in  conjunction  with  his  surpassing 
acuteness  and  subtilty,  might  have  easily  won  distinction; 
but  while  "  they  fancied  be  was  poring  over  Voet  and 
Vinnius,  Cicero  and  Virml  were  the   authors   he  was   se- 


882  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

cretly  devouring."  An  experiment  in  mercantile  life  was 
equally  unsuccessful.  In  1734,  he  went  to  Bristol  with 
introductions  to  "  eminent  merchants "  in  that  city,  but  he 
found  this  "scene  utterly  unsuitable."  He  then  exiled 
himself  to  France ;  and  first  at  Rheims,  then  at  La  Fleche, 
devoted  himself  in  studious  solitude,  to  literature  and  phi- 
losophy. During  this  time  he  made  a  "rigid  frugality 
supply  the  deficiencies  of  fortune  "  —  a  course  to  which  he 
resolutely  adhered  till  the  dawn  of  better  days  ;  and  with 
singular  decision  of  character,  and  obedience  to  the  ruling 
passion,  "  regarded  every  object  as  contemptible  except  the 
improvement  of  his  talents  for  literature."  In  this  interval 
he  meditated  and  composed  his  Treatise  of  Human  Nature. 
This  work  was  completed  by  his  twenty-fifth  year,  and,  as 
the  production  of  so  young  a  mind,  must  certainly  be  re- 
garded as  a  prodigy  of  metaphysical  acuteness.  Indeed, 
there  is  reason  to  believe,  that  the  results  of  his  speculation 
(if  scepticism  allow  the  term)  must  have  been  arrived  at* 
long  before,  even  from  his  boyish  days.  In  the  account  he 
gives  of  himself  in  that  remarkable  letter,  first  published  by 
Mr.  Burton,  (vol.  i.,  pp.  31-39,)  in  which  he  anonymously 
consults  a  physician  in  relation  to  some  singular  but  very 
prolonged  hypochondriacal  afiection,  (itself,  probably,  both 
symptom  and  effect  of  an  overwrought  mind,)  he  discloses  a 
style  of  thought  and  points  to  a  method  of  speculation  which 
strongly  remind  us  of  the  conditions  of  mind  under  which 
Descartes  commenced  philosopher.  Were  there  any  proofs 
(as  there  are  certainly  none)  of  his  acquaintance  with  Des- 
cartes' writings  at  this  early  age,  it  would  have  seemed 
almost  certain  that  his  method  of  philosophizing  was  sheer 
imitation;  on  the  other  hand,  if  this  letter  had  been  written 
after  his  residence  at  La  Fleche,  where  Descartes  felt  so 
similarly,  the  same  conclusion  would  have  been  inevitable. 
From  this  letter,  as  a  clue  to  mi^ph  in  the  character  of  his 


DAVID    HUME.  383 

mind  and  its  after  history,  and  of  its  tendencies  to  morbid 
speculation  at  a  very  early  date,  we  shall  presently  give 
some  extracts. 

In  1737,  Hume  came  to  London  with  his  Treatise  on 
Human  Nature,  and  in  the  next  year  published  it.  "  Never 
literary  attempt,"  he  says,  "  was  more  unfortunate ;  it  fell 
dead-bom  from  the  press,  without  reaching  such  distinction 
as  even  to  exite  a  murmur."  He  declares,  however,  that 
being  naturally  of  a  cheerful  temper,  he  soon  recovered 
from  this  and  similar  subsequent  disappointments.  Yet  it  is 
clear,  from  the  details  in  Burton's  Life,  that  the  equanimity 
of  our  philosopher  was  sorely  tried ;  that  he  had,  with  the 
exaggeration  natural  in  a  young  author,  been  expecting  that 
the  world  would  have  little  to  do  for  a  time,  except  to  read 
his  lucubrations!  He  tells  his  friend  Ramsay,  that  "he 
would  not  aim  at  any  thing  until  he  could  judge  of  his 
suqcess  in  hi$  grand  undertaking,  and  see  upon  what  footing 
he  was  to  stand  in  the  world  ; "  and  as  the  day  of  publica- 
tion drew  near,  confesses  to  being  perturbed  at  "  the  near- 
ness of  the  great  event."  Yet  it  is  certain  that  he  bore  the 
disappointment  of  his  hopes  on  this  occasion  much  better 
than  he  did  some  far  lighter  failures  of  the  same  kind. 
Cheerful  as  might  be  his  temper,  buoyant  as  were  his  hopes, 
his  mortifications  of  this  sort,  and  especially  that  which 
befell  him  when  he  published  the  first  volume  of  his  History, 
were  keenly  felt  and  remembered,  and  engendered  prejudices 
against  the  "  Public,"  which  little  became  a  philosopher,  and 
utterly  prevented  him  from  doing  the  said  "  Public  "  justice. 
Properly  speaking  he  never  forgave  its  early  neglect,  and 
could  not  see  that  he  had  not  been  a  very  ill-used  man,  even 
when  fame  and  competency  had  rewarded  his  at  first  un- 
promising labors.  In  the  case  of  the  Treatise  of  Human 
Nature,  however,  he  himself  admits,  that  in  fact  the  public 
was  in  the  right ;  which,  indeed,  any  one  would  naturally 
expect,  seeing  that  the  philosopher  was  but  five-and-twenty, 


8B4k  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  his  philosophy  the  product  of  that  mature  age !    That 
he  was  not  insensible  that  his  failure  in  the  first  instance 
was  more  attributable  to  himself  than  to  the  world,  is  sig- 
nificantly shown  by  his  acknowledgment  of  indiscretion  in 
going  to  the  press  so  early.     "  I  had  always,"  he  says,  "  en- 
tertained a  notion  that  my  want  of  success  in  publishing  the 
Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  had  proceeded  more  from  the 
manner  than  the  matter"  (equally  from  both,  the   public 
would  say,)  "  and  that  I  liad  been  guilty  of  a  very  usual 
indiscretion  in  goilig  to  the  press  too  early."     He  tells  us, 
he  "  set  about  remedying  its  defects."     He  cast  the  first  part 
of  it   entirely   anew    in   the   Enquiry   concerning   Human 
Understanding,  published  1747  ;  but  this,  he  confesses,  had 
little  more  success  than  the  former.     In  fact,  he  was  still  but 
serving  his  apprenticeship  to  fame  —  which  many  a  man,  as 
great,  has  had  to  do  for  a  much  longer  period.     In  1742,  he 
published  the  first  part  of  his  Essays.     These,  which  were 
buoyed  up  by  a  large  intermixture  'of  more  attractive  topics 
than  those  of  the   Treatise,  and  were  recommended  by  the 
fascinations  of  a  far  more  finished  style,  met  with  a  better 
reception,  and  they  have  since  been  always  popular.     The 
second  edition,  however,  did  not  go  off  rapidly  enough  to 
satisfy  the  exacting  temper  of  the  author.     After  publishing 
the    Treatise,  he  lived  for  some  time  with  his  brother  in 
Scotland,   still   ardently  pursuing   his   literary  occupations. 
This  mode  of  life  was  not  very  agreeably  diversified  by  the 
temporary  charge  of  the  half  mad,  or  at  least  wholly  hyp- 
ochondriacal  Earl  of  Annandale  (1745).     Whether   tutor 
or  keeper  be  the  more   proper  term  for  our   philosopher 
during  a  year  of  very  humiliating  servitude,  it  seems  hard 
to  say.     His   next   post  (1747)  was   that  of  secretary  to 
General  St.  Clair,  whom    he  accompanied    in    his  military 
embassy  to  the  courts  of  Vienna  and  Turin.     He  was  intro- 
duced, he  tells  us,  as  aid-de-camp  to  the  general,  and  wore 
the  uniform  of  an  officer,  —  a  droll  transformation  for  our 


DAVID    HUME.  '  385 

ungainly  philosopher.  Two  years  were  thus  spent,  almost 
the  only  years  of  his  life,  he  declares,  in  which  he  was 
"  estranged  from  literature."  Total  estrangement  can  hardly 
be  supposed,  nor  does  one  see  any  reason  for  it.  If  it  were 
80,  the  military  uniform  in  his  case  must  have  done  more 
than  even  the  active  duties  of  a  soldier's  life  could  do  in  that 
of  Gibbon,  in  whom  the  passion  for  literature  was,  however, 
still  more  ardent  than  in  Hume.  Gibbon's  account,  in  his 
Journal,  of  the  absolute  possession  which  history  had  taken 
of  him,  of  the  enthusiasm  with  which  he  indulged  dreams 
of  literary  ambition  and  pursued  his  studies  even  in  his  tent, 
affords  a  striking  instance  of  the  "  ruling  passion."  But  if 
Hume's  occupations  estranged  him  for-  a  while  from  litera- 
ture, the  emoluments  of  his  office  were  not  to  be  despised  ; 
they  so  materially  aided  his  very  limited  resources,  that  he 
sometimes  pleasantly  talked  to  his  smiling  friends  of  having 
achieved  independent  fortune :  "  I  was  now,"  says  he, 
"  master  of  near  a  thousand  pounds  !  " 

In  1749,  he  again  repaired  to  his  brother's  house,  where 
he  took  up  his  abode  for  two  years.  He  spent  his  leisure  in 
composing  the  second  part  of  his  essays,  which  he  called 
Political  Discourses,  and  his  Enquiry  concerning  the  Prin- 
ciples of  Moral$.  His  publisher  now  told  him,  that  his  writ- 
ings, "  all  but  the  unfortunate  Treatise,  were  beginning  to 
be  asked  for  and  talked  about."  "  It  was  a  hopeful  symp- 
tom too,"  he  tells  us,  "  that  answers  by  reverends  and  right 
reverends  came  out  two  or  three  in  a  year ; "  and  that  he 
"  found,  by  Dr.  Warburton's  railing,  that  the  books  were 
beginning  to  be  esteemed  in  good  company." 

In  1751,  he  removed  from  the  country  to  Edinburgh, 
under  the  notion  that  the  "  capital  was  the  true  scene  for  a 
man  of  letters  ;  "  and  in  the  following  year  he  published  the 
Political  Discourses ;  "  the  only  work  of  mine,"  says  he, 
"  that  was  successful  on  the  first  publication."  It  is  difficult 
to  say  what  is  the  criterion  of  success  in  the  estimate  of  un- 
33 


886  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

reasonable  expectation ;  but  Hume  was  still  a  young  writer, 
and  he  certainly  had  no  reason  to  complain  of  the  reception 
of  the  first  part  of  his  Essays.  Conscious  of  power,  he  was 
too  impatient  for  fame,  and  forgot  that  fame  is  a  thing  of 
slow  growth ;  he  wished  to  see  the  oak  rise  immediately 
from  the  acorn.  Meantime,  grumble  as  he  might,  his  sap- 
lings, in  the  estimate  of  any  sober  judge,  would  be  thought 
to  be  doing  well  enough. 

In  the  same  year  he  published  in  London,  his  Enquiry 
concerning  the  Principles  of  Morals,  of  which  he  hesitates 
not  to  say,  that  "  of  all  his  writings,  philosophical,  literary, 
or  historical,  it  is  incomparably  the  best." 

Hume  wondered  that  Rousseau  should  prefer  his  Emile 
to  his  Heloise,  and  compares  it  to  Milton's  preference  of  his 
Paradise  Regained  to  his  Paradise  Lost.  Whether  ^ume 
himself  be  not  another  instance  of  a  singular  delusion,  many 
readers  will  have  their  doubts.  But  much  will  depend  on 
what  is  meant  by  "  best."  If  Hume  meant  by  "  best,"  that 
the  Enquiry  was  the  most  original  and  acute  of  his  writings, 
that  which  displayed  most  power,  posterity  will  hardly 
affirm  his  verdict ;  if  by  "  best,"  he  meant,  that  of  all  his 
writings,  it  ig  most  free  from  paradox  and  error,  it  will 
probably  be  granted.  Sir  James  Mackintosh  has  observed, 
that  "  it  is  creditable  to  him  that  he  deliberately  preferred 
the  treatise  Avhich  is  least  tainted  with  paradox,  though  the 
least  original  of  all  his  writings."  Sir  James  contends,  how- 
ever, for  its  preeminent  excellence  of  style.  For-  a  very 
able  criticism  of  its  merits  and  defects,  the  reader  is  referred 
to  the  second  Dissertation. 

In  1752,  Hume  was  appointed  librarian  to  the  Faculty 
of  Advocates.  The  chief  immediate  value  of  the  ofRce,  to 
which  little  or  no  emolument  was  attached,  consisted  in  the 
access  it  afforded  to  a  large  library  ;  indirectly  it  was  of 
greater  advantage,  as  this  last  circumstance  encouraged,  if  it 
did  not  suggest,  his  writing  the  History  of  England.     Ter- 


DAVID    HUME.  387 

riiied,  however,  with  the  magnitude  of  the  task,  dreading, 
as  ue  Well  might,  to  begin,  after  the  orthodox  manner,  with 
the  landing  of  Julius  Csesar,  he  commenced  with  the  acces- 
sion of  the  Stuarts,  "  an  epoch,"  he  thought,  "  when  the  mis- 
representations began  chiefly  to  take  place  ; "  but  which,  let 
them  be  what  they  would,  could  hardly  transcend  his  own. 
His  anticipations  of  success  were,  as  in  former  cases,  san- 
guine, and  he  was  doomed,  for  a  while,  to  see  the  usual  frus- 
tration of  his  hopes.  "  Miserable,"  says  he,  "  was  my  dis- 
appointment ;  I  was  assailed  by  one  cry  of  reproach,  disap- 
pointment, and  even  execration.  English,  Scotch,  and  Irish ; 
Wliig  and  Tory,  churchman  and  sectary,  free-thinker  and 
religionist,  united  in  their  rage  against  the  one  man  who  had 
presumed  to  shed  a  generous  tear  for  the  fate  of  Charles  I. 
and  the  Earl  of  StraflTord."  Hume's  indignation  makes  a 
droll  mis-estimate  of  his  own  enormous  delinquencies.  If 
he  had  exercised  common  justice  and  impartiality,  to  say 
nothing  of  "  generosity,"  in  other  cases,  the  few  "  gAierous 
tears  "  which  the  unwontedly  sentimental  skeptic  could  have 
managed  to  distil  for  Strafford  or  Charles,  would  never  have 
given  such  mortal  offence.  It  was  yet  more  mortifying  to 
the  author,  that  the  furious  storm  which  greeted  the  first 
appearance  of  the  work,  subsided  into  a  more  vexatious 
calm  ;  for  what  man  would  not  sooner  be  railed  at  than  for- 
gotten? The  History  seemed  doomed  to  oblivion.  The 
publisher  assured  Hume,  that  "  in  a  year  he  sold  but  forty- 
five  copies."  Hume  himself  confesses,  that  with  two  "  odd 
exceptions,"  —  the  Primates  of  England  and  Ireland,  —  he 
scarcely  heard  of  any  man  of  rank  or  letters  who  "  could 
endure  the  book ; "  and  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  breaking 
out  of  the  war  with  France  (in  spite  of  the  "  cheerful  tem- 
per "  with  which  he  would  have  us  believe  his  philosophy 
took  such  things  ^),  he  would  have  sought  an  asylum  there, 

1  On  a  subsequent  occasion,  when  complaining  of  the  tardiness  of 
his  political  patrons,  Hume  repeated  this  sort  of  threat.  —  "  The  fum- 


388  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

and  changing  his  name,  for  ever  renounced  his  country  ! 
As  it  was,  his  country  was  spared  this  dire  infliction.  Mean- 
time, Hume  persevered,  and  his  second  volume  which  ap- 
peared two  years  afterwards  had  somewhat  better  success. 

In  1759,  he  pubHshed,  according  to  the  retrograde  course 
in  which  he  had  commenced,  the  history  of  the  House  of 
Tudor,  which  also  was  received  with  a  storm  of  disapproba- 
tion. But  if  we  may  trust  his  own  averment,  he  was  now 
"  callous  against  the  impression  of  public  folly;  "  and  gave  the 
early  history  in  two  more  volumes  in  1761,  "  with  tolerable, 
and  but  tolerable  success."' 

But  that  his  complaints  of  want  of  success  were,  on  the 
whole,  unreasonable,  is  evident  from  his  own  statement, 
namely,  that  in  spite  of  all  "  public  folly,"  "  the  copy-money 
given  him  by  the  booksellers  much  exceeded  any  thing  for- 
merly known  in  England."  In  fact  he  had  been,  as  usual, 
too  impatient  of  success.  But  even  when  he  had  become, 
and  in  a  large  degree  from  his  literary  labors,  "  not  only  in- 
dependent, but  opulent "  according  to  his  truly  philosophi- 
cal scale  of  riches,  —  he  never  forgave  the  "  public  folly " 
for  not  instantaneously  recognizing  his  merits. 

Though  his  History  had  grievous  defects,  which  he  took 
care,  in  the  indulgence  of  his  prejudices  (continually 
strengthening  with  opposition),  to  aggravate  in  every  suc- 
cessive edition,  it  had  also  singular  merits,  and  was  secure 
of  the  popularity  which  the  impatience  of  its  author  thought 
so  tardy.  It  was  nearly  the  first  modern  example  of  his- 
tory treated  in  a  philosophical  spirit,  while  the  charms  of 
its  unrivalled  style  would  alone  have  insured  its  success. 

ing  incense,"  says  the  critic  in  the  Ed.  Review,  (1847,)  "which  the 
Parisians  were  offering  him  as  a  sort  of  male  Goddess  of  Keason, 
must  have  intoxicated  him,  or  he  never  would  have  closed  a  letter 
with  the  formal  notice,  — '  I  have  been  accustomed  to  meet  with 
nothing  but  insults  and  indignities  from  my  native  country  ;  but  if  it 
continue  so,  '  imjrata  patria,  ne  ossa  quidem  habebis.' " 


DAVID    HUME.  389 

In  the  interval  between  the  first  and  second  vohimes  of 
his  History  he  published  his  Natural  History  of  Religion  ; 
of  which  he  says  the  "  public  entry  was  obscurfe ; "  its  con- 
tents, acute  as  the  treatise  is,  need  not  leave  us  in  any  won- 
der at  that.  For  this  neglect,  however,  he  assures  us  he 
received  consolation,  in  the  shape  of  "  a  pamphlet  by  Dr. 
Ilurd,  written  with  all  the  illiberal  petulance,  arrogance, 
and  scurrility,  which  distinguish  the  Warburtouian  school." 
The  consolation,  from  this  mode  of  speaking  of  it,  would 
not  seem  very  soothing. 

Hume  was  now  (1761)  fifty  years  of  age,  and  meditated 
a  philosphical  retreat  in  Edinburgh  for  the  rest  of  his  days ; 
but  on  receiving  an  invitation  from  Lord  Hertford  to  attend 
him  in  his  embassy  to  Paris,  with  the  prospect  of  secretary- 
ship to  the  embassy,  he,  after  some  hesitation,  consented. 
He  was  soon  appointed  secretary,  and  in  1765,  when  Lord 
•Hertford  was  made  lord-lieutenant  of  Ireland,  was  left  at 
Paris  as  Charge  d' Affairs  till  the  new  ambassador,  the  Duke 
of  Richmond,  arrived.  In  1766,  he  returned  to  Edin- 
burgh, "  not  richer,"  he  pleasantly  says,  "  hut  with  much 
more  money." 

During  his  residence  in  Paris,  he  was  not  only  welcome, 
he  was  the  rage.  In  spite  of  his  philosophical  shyness,  his 
destitution  of  all  personal  graces  and  charm  of  manner,  and 
even  in  spite  of  his  French  —  French  which  only  French 
politeness  could  have  heard  without  laughing  —  he  was 
overwhelmed  with  the  most  flattering  attentions  of  combined 
rank  and  genius,  youth  and  beauty. .  "  The  more  I  resiled 
from  these  excessive  civiUties,"  says  he,  "  the  more  I  was 
loaded  with  them."  It  is  evident,  nevertheless,  from  many 
expressions,  that  this  homage  was  not  a  little  soothing  to  our 
philosopher's  complacency,  and  often  excited  a  flutter  of 
vanity  which  his  philosophy  would  hardly  have  approved  ; 
and  he  would  as  certainly  have  been  cured  of  it,  had  he 
been  duly  conscious  of  the  ridiculous  position  in  which  his 
33* 


390  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

worshippers  often  placed  him.  "  From  what  has  already 
been  said  of  him,"  says  Lord  Charlemont,  "  it  is  apparent 
that  his  conversation  to  strangers,  and  particularly  to 
Frenchmen,  could  be  little  delightful,  and  still  more  par- 
ticularly, one  would  suppose,  to  Fi-ench  women  ;  and  yet  no 
lady's  toilette  was  complete  without  Hume's  attendance.  At 
the  opera  his  broad  unmeaning  face  was  usually  seen  entre 
deuxjolis  minois.  The  ladies  in  France  gave  the  ton,  and 
the  ton  was  deism  ;  a  species  of  philosophy  ill  suited  to  the 
softer  sex,  in  whose  delicate  frame  weakness  is  interesting, 
and  timidity  a  charm.  .  .  .  How  my  friend  Hume  was  able 
to  endure  the  encounter  of  these  French  female  Titans,  I 
know  not."  ^  Some  of  the  scenes  in  which  fashionable  soci- 
ety doomed  him  to  enact  a  part,  must  have  been  exquisitely 
comic  ;  and  had  his  friends  intended  to  ridicule,  not  to  honor 
him,  they  could  hardly  have  devised  any  thing  better 
adapted  to  the  purpose.  The  scene  described  so  vividly 
by  Madame  D'Epinay,  must  surely  have  been  abundantly 
trying.  We  have  hardly  space  for  the  passage,  but  it  is  so 
graphic,  and  indeed  so  instructive,  that  we  cannot  resist  the 
temptation   to   give   an   abridged   translation   below.*^     On 

1  Memoires  of  Charlemont,  cited  in  Burton's  Life,  vol.  ii.  p.  223.  To- 
which  we  may  add  the  following  from  Grimm's  Correspondence  Litter- 
aire:  —  "Cequ'ilya  encore  de  plaisant,  c'est  que  toutes  les  jolies 
femiries  se  le  sont  arrache,  et  que  le  gros  philosophe  Ecossais  s'estplus 
dans  leur  societe.  C'est  un  excellent  homme,  que  David  Hume ;  il 
est  naturellement  serein,  il  entend  finement,  il  dit  quelque-fois  avec 
Bel,  quoiqu'il  parle  pcu  ;  mais  il  est  lourd,  il  n'a  ni  chaleur,  ni  grace, 
ni  agrement  dans  I'esprit,  ni  rien  qui  soit  propre  k  s'allier  au  ramage 
de  ces  charmantcs  petitcs  machines  qu'on  appelle  jolies  femmes.  O 
que  nous  sommes  un  drole  de  peuple  !  "  —  Ibid. 

2  "  The  celebrated  David  Hume,  the  great  fat  English  historian, 
known  and  esteemed  for  his  writings,  has  not  equal  talents  for  the 
social  amusements  for  which  all  our  pretty  women  had  decided  him 

to  be  fit.     He  made  his  debiit  at  the  house  of  Madame  do  T -. 

They  had  destined  him  to  act  the  part  of  a  sultan  seated  between  two 
slaves,  employing  all  his  eloquence  to  make  them  fall  in  lave  with 


DAVID    HUME.  391 

another  occasion  still  more  trying  to  his  gravity,  if  not  to  his 
modesty,  he  was  compelled  to  listen  to  complimentary  har- 
angues from  the  Dauphin's  children,  —  the  youngest  of  the 
child-orators  unhappily  breaking  down  in  the  middle  of  his 
address  ;  we  shall  give  the  scene  in  Hume's  own  vein  of 
quiet  pleasantry.  It  is  clear  that  however  flattered  by  the 
homage  received,  as  other  expressions  in  his  letters  prove, 
he  was  by  no  means  insensible  to  the  absurdity  of  the  situa- 
tion in  which  the  extravagance  of  adulation  sometimes 
placed  him.  "  Do  you  ask  me,"  says  he,  "  about  my  course 
of  life  ?  I  can  only  say  that  I  eat  nothing  but  ambrosia, 
drink  nothing  but  nectar,  breathe  nothing  but  incense,  and 
tread  on  nothing  but  flowers.  Every  man  I  meet,  and  still 
more,  every  lady,  would  think  they  were  "wanting  in  the 
most  indispens'able  duty,  if  they  did  not  make  a  long  and 

him ;  finding  thera  inexorable,  he  was  to  seek  the  cause  of  their  ob- 
stinacy ;  he  is  placed  on  the  sofa  between  the  two  prettiest  women  in 
Paris,  he  looks  at  them  attentively,  keeps  striking  his  hands  on  his 
stomach  and  knees,  and  finds  nothing  else  to  say  to  them  than,  — '  Eh 
bien !  mes  demoiselles.  .  .  .  Eh  bien !  vous  voilk  done  !  .  .  .  Eh  bien  ! 
vous  voilJi  .  .  .  vous  voilk  ici  1 '  This  lasted  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
without  his  being  able  to  get  any  further.  One  of  them  at  last  rose 
impatiently.  .  .  .  Since  then  he  has  been  doomed  to  the  part  of  a 
spectator,  and  is  not  less  welcomed'  and  flattered.  In  tmth,  the  part 
he  plays  here  is  most  amusing.  Unfortunately  for  him,  or  rather  for 
philosophic  dignity  (for  he  seems  to  accommodate  himself  very  well  to 
this  mode  of  life),  there  was  no  ruling  mania  in  this  country  when  he 
came  here  ;  under  these  circumstances  he  was  looked  upon  as  a  new 
found  treasure,  and  the  enthusiasm  of  our  young  heads  turned  to- 
wards him.  All  the  pretty  women  are  mad  about  him ;  he  is  at  all 
the  fine  suppers,  and  there  is  no  good  fete  without  him  ;  in  a  word,  he 
is  among  our  fashionables  what  the  Genevcse  are  to  me."  (Memoirs 
and  Correspondence  de  Madame  D'Epinay,  vol.  iii.  p.  284.)  Well 
might  a  writer  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  say,  "  Since  the  exhibition  of 
the  old  Fabliaux  of  Aristotle  in  love  down  upon  all-fours,  and  his 
mistress  riding  on  his  back  —  there  has  been  no  representation  of  phi- 
losophy so  out  of  character,  as  it  is  shown  us  in  the  portrait  of  Hume 
by  Madame  d'Epinay."     [Ed.  Review,  January,  1847.) 


392  NEW   BTOGRAPHIES. 

elaborate  harangue  in  my  praise.    What  happened  last  week, 

when  I  had  the  honor  of  being  presented  to  the  D n's 

children,  at  Versailles,  is  one  of  the  most  curious  scenes  I 
had  yet  passed  through.  The  Due  de  B.,  the  eldest,  a  boy  of 
ten  years  old,  stepped  forth  and  told  me  •  how  many  friends 
and  admirers  I  had  in  this  country,  and  that  he  reckoned 
himself  in  the  number,  from  the  pleasure  he  had  received 
from  the  reading  of  many  passages  in  my  works.  When  he 
had  finished,  his  brother,  the  Count  de  P.,  who  is  two  yeai's 
younger,  began  his  discourse,  and  informed  me  that  I  had 
been  long  and  impatiently  expected  in  France,  and  that  he 
himself  expected  soon  to  have  great  satisfaction  from  the 
reading  of  my  fine  History.  But  what  is  more  curious, 
when  I  was  carried  thence  to  the  Count  D'A.,  who  is  but 
four  years  of  age,  I  heard  him  mumble  something  which, 
though  he  had  foi'got  in  the  way,  I  conjectured  from  some 
scattered  words,  to  have  been  also  a  panegyric  dictated  to 
him.  Nothing  could  more  surprise  my  friends,  the  Parisian 
philosophers,  than  this  incident."  ^ 

The  Fi-ench  of  Hume  could  scarcely  have  been  so  bad 
as  the  malicious  wit  of  Horace  Walpole  has  represented  it ; 
if  it  was,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that,  however  prone  may  have 
been  the  French  just  at  that  moment  to  admii-e,  he  should 
have  been  able  to  get  on  in  the  saloons  of  Paris  at  all. 
Even  French  civility  could  hardly  have  kept  its  counte- 
nance. That  it  did  not  refrain  from  sarcasm  we  have  some 
proofs,  while  Hume's  English  acquaintance  exercised  it 
abundantly.  "The  French,"  says  Walpole  with  his  cus- 
tomary cynicism,  "  believe  in  Mr.  Hume  ;  the  only  thing  in 
the  world  that  they  believe  implicitly  ;  for  I  defy  them  to 
understand  any  language  which  he  speaks."  And  in  a  letter 
first  published  in  the  Suffolk  Correspondence,  he  says,  with 
still  more  reckless  causticity,  "  as  every  thing  English  is  in 

1  Burton,  vol.  ii.  p.  177,  178. 


DAVID    HUME.  393 

fashion^  our  bad  French  is  accepted  into  the  bargain.  Many ' 
of  us  are  received  everywhere.  Mr.  Hume  is  fashion  itself, 
although  his  French  is  almost  as  unintelligible  as  his  Eng- 
lish."^ It  is  not  Walpole  only,  however,  that  makes  himself 
merry  with  the  philosopher's  French.  One  of  Rousseau's 
suspicions  of  Hume  was  founded  on  a  few  words  of  French 
which  he  uttered  in  his  sleep.  Hume  remarked  that  he  was 
not  aware  that  he  dreamt  in  French  ;  "  he  could  not," 
quietly  said  M.  Morellet. 

Of  his  quarrel  with  Rousseau,  which  made  so  much  noise 
at  the  time  of  its  occurrence  both  in  England  and  France, 
Hume,  in  the  little  sketch  of  his  life,  which  comes  up  to 
within  a  short  period  of  his  death,  says  not  one  syllable.  It 
certainly  was  not  from  thinkmg  it  of  no  importance,  for  it 
gave  him  a  world  of  vexation  ;  indeed  he  confesses  it  was 
one  of  the  most  painful,  as  well  as  the  most  extraordinary 
that  had  ever  happened  to  him.  It  was  perhaps  partly  from 
unpleasant  remembrances,  that  he  passed  it  by ;  but  also 
probably  from  a  more  creditable  motive.  Angry,  and  justly 
angry  as  he  had  felt  at  Rousseau's  ingratitude  and  absurdity 
—  unphilosophically  virulent  as  his  language  ^  had  sometimes 
been,  he  doubtless  felt  inchned  as  time  rolled  on,  to  acquiesce 
in  the  views  since  generally  taken,  namely,  that  the  French 
philosopher's  "  egotism  "  and  "  sentimentality  "  were  not  sel- 
dom undistinguishable  from  madness ;  and  whether  they  had 
produced  it  or  resulted  from  it  might  be  a  fair  question.  Of 
the  whole  quarrel,  a  most  copious  and  interesting  account 
will  be  found  in  Burton's  Life  of  Hume  ;  and  it  is  no  more 
than  just  to  say  that  Hume  comes  out  of  it  in  a  manner 
highly  creditable  not  only  to  his  honor  but  to  his  benevo- 
lence.    His  friends  in  France  had  forewarned  him  what  a 


1  In  the  celebrated  introduction  to  the  letter  to  Baron  d'Holbach, 
in  which  Hume  first  explodes  in  wrath,  he  says,  "  Mon  cher  Baron, 
Jean  Jacques  est  un  scflerat." 


394  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

monster  of  intractable  caprice  and  infinite  egolisnijie  was 
patronizing ;  —  all  which  he  found  out  when  it  was  too  late. 
Surely  the  scene  which  he  himself  paints  with  so  much 
vividness,  in  which  Rousseau,  after  fantastically  misinterpret- 
ing an  act  of  kindness  into  the  most  villanous  malignity, 
suddenly  relents,  pops  down  into  the  surprised  philosopher's 
lap,  and  sobs  and  blubbers  out  his  momentary  repentance 
amidst  tears  and  kisses,  —  repentance  soon  to  be  followed 
by  a  relapse  into  as  capricious  resentment,  —  presents  a 
picture  of  Rousseau,  of  which  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  it  be 
more  pitiable  or  ludicrous  ;  while  we  may  easily  conceive 
that  to  one  of  so  "  unsentimental "  a  nature  as  Hume,  his 
involuntary  role  in  so  ridiculously  "  tender  scene  "  must  have 
been  profoundly  mortifying. 

"  I  endeavored,"  says  Hume,  "  to  pacify  you  and  to  divert 
the  discourse,  but  to  no  purpose.  You  sat  sullen,  and  was 
either  silent,  or  made  me  very  peevish  answers.  At  last 
you  rose  up  and  took  a  turn  or  two  about  the  roOm,  when 
all  of  a  sudden,  and  to  my  great  surprise,  you  clapped  your- 
self on  my  knee,  threw  your  arms  about  my  neck,  kissed  me 

with  seeming  ardor,  and  bedewed  my  face  with  tears 

I  was  very  much  affected,  I  own ;  and  I  believe  a  very  ten- 
der scene  passed  between  us."  The  description  of  Rousseau 
is,  as  may  be  expected,  still  richer.^ 

After  about  two  more  years  (1767-1769),  of  political  ser- 
vice as  under  secretary,  a  post  to  which  he  was  preferred 
by  General  Conway,  Hume  finally  retired  to  Edinburgh, 
and  there  anticipated  a  calm  philosophic  evening  of  life  in 
the  midst  of  his  favorite  society.  To  use  his  own  words  he 
was  "  very  opulent,"  having  a  revenue  of  £1000  a  year. 
His  society  was  much  courted  by  men  of  the  highest  literary 
reputation,  and  of  the  widest  diversity  of  opinions,  both 
political  and  religious.     Freed  from  literary  and  all  other 

1  Burton,  vol,  ii.  p.  342. 


DAVID    HUME.  395 

cares,  he  entertained,  "though  somewhat  stricken  in, years, 
the  prospect  of  enjoying  long  his  ease,  and  seeing  the  in- 
crease of  his  reputation." 

These  hopes  were  fallacious.  In  1775,  appeared  the  first 
symptoms  of  that  long  decay  which  terminated  in  his  death, 
August,  1776. 

It  is  but  justice  to  say  that  all  concurrent  testimony 
proves  him  to  have  borne  this  slow  and  harassing,  though, 
it  seems,  by  no  means  painful  illness,  not  only  with  exem- 
plary fortitude  and  patience,  but  with  much  sweetness  of 
temper,  and  to  have  contemplated  the  great  change  with  un- 
diminiAed  serenity.  Convinced  that  his  disease  was  incur- 
able long  before  his  friends  would  believe  it,  he  refused  to 
listen  to  false  predictions  of  returning  health.  When  Dr. 
Dundas  intimated  that  he  should  tell  his  friend,  Colonel 
Elphinstone,  that  he  "  was  much  better,  and  in  a  fair  way  of 
recovery,"  Hume  replied,  "  Doctor,  as  I  believe  you  would 
not  choose  to  tell  any  thing  but  the  truth,  you  had  better  tell 
him  that  I  am  dying  as  fast  as  my  worst  enemies,  if  I  have 
any,  could  wish,  and  as  easily  as  my  best  friends  could 
desire." 

Sometimes,  it  is  true,  he  regarded  the  approach  of  the 
last  moment  with  a  hilarity  strangely  unbecoming  his  situa- 
tion, whether  as  a  philosopher  or  a  man  ;  and  his  ill-timed 
pleasantry  about  Charon's  boat  might  well  have  been  spared. 
John  Foster,  in  his  review  of  Ritchie's  Life  of  the  philos- 
opher, has  observed,  that  even  on  the  hypothesis  that  death 
is  an  extinction  of  our  being,  much  more  on  that  of  Hume's 
skepticism,  which  left  it  uncertain  whether  death  might  not 
reveal  the  truth  of  what  he  had  been  doubting  all  his  life 
long,  any  thing  bordering  on  levity  in  such  an  hour  is  utterly 
out  of  place.  It  is  as  though  a  man  should  laugh  and  caper 
in  the  cave  of  Trophonius.  But,  in  other  respects,  it  can- 
not be  denied  that  Hume's  last  hours  exhibit  a  serenity 
which,  though  often  exemplified  by  religion,  has  rarely  been 


396  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

exhibited  by  philosophy,  and  still  more  rarely  by  a  skeptical 
philosophy. 

Foolish  inferences  have  been  founded  on  what  cannot 
without  gross  disingenousness  be  denied,  —  the  philosophic 
fortitude  and  tranquillity  of  Hume's  death,  —  and  equally 
foolish  attempts  made  to  prove  all  that  fortitude  and  tran- 
quillity affectation.  Experience  ought  to  convince  us  that 
nothing  can  be  inferred  from  the  adaptation  of  this  or  that 
system  of  philosophy  or  religion  to  produce  calmness  in  a 
dying  hour,  from  the  phenomena  of  any  individual  death- 
bed. The  best  men  have  often  encountered  the  great  enemy 
with  dismay,  and  the  worst  with  tranquillity.  We  •can  as 
little  infer  from  their  conduct  what  death  is  to  disclose,  as 
we  could  infer  what  is  at  the  bottom  of  a  deep  abyss,  if  we 
saw  that,  of  a  thousand  men  who  were  compelled  to  leap 
into  it,  some  madly  laughed,  and  some  pusillanimously  wept 
on  the  brink  before  making  the  inevitable  plunge.  It  should 
be  sufl&cient  to  vindicate  the  superiority  at  least  of  a  Chris- 
tian's faith  to  every  form  of  skepticism,  that  if  he  has  really 
lived  in  accordance  with  his  hopes  and  convictions,  the  nat- 
ural tendency  of  his  sentiments  and  conduct  is  to  produce 
tranquillity  at  the  last  hour,  whether  from  physical  causes 
he  attains  that  tranquillity  or  not ;  and  that  his  "  immortal 
hopes  "  —  even  if  they  were  to  prove  delusions  —  are  as 
naturally  connected  with  a  peaceful  close  of  the  great  strife 
as  any  other  cause  with  its  effect.  Nothing  can  be  more 
true  than  the  pointed  declaration  of  Lord  Byron :  "  Indis- 
putably the  firm  believers  in  the  Gospel  have  a  great  ad- 
vantage over  all  others,  for  this  simple  reason,  that,  if  true, 
they  will  have  their  reward  hereafter ;  and,  if  there  be  no 
hereafter,  they  can  be  but  with  the  infidel  in  his  eternal 
sleep,  having  had  the  assistance  of  an  exalted  hope  through 
life,  without  subsequent  disappointment,  since  (at  the  worst 
for  them)  '  out  of  nothing  nothing  can  arise,  not  even  sor- 
row.' " 


DAVID    HUME.  397 

On  the  other  hand,  even  the  least  candid  of  skeptics  will 
acknowledge  that  there  is  nothing  in  skepticism  itself —  least 
of  all  in  such  radical,  devastating  skepticism  as  that  of 
Hume  —  naturally  calculated  to  soothe  a  dying  hour. 
Though  a  skeptic  may  meet  it  with  tranquillity,  from  frigid- 
ity of  temperament  or  hardihood  of  character,  or  fixed 
aversion  to  look  at  the  future,  or  from  a  too  complacent  esti- 
mate of  his  own  worth,^  or  a  deficient  moral  sensibility,  or 
from  many  other  reasons,  assuredly  there  is  nothing  in  the 
native  tendency  of  a  skeptic's  sentiments  to  render  a  death- 
bed more  tolerable. 

And  that  such  is  the  natural  impotence  of  skeptical  phi- 
losophy tor  all  such  purposes,  would  seem  to  be  indicated  by 
the  frequent  appeal  of  skeptics  to  this  "  instantia  solitaria  " 
of  Hume's  death-bed.  The  rarity  of  the  phenomenon  neu- 
tralizes it  as  an  argument ;  if,  like  the  calm  or  triumphant 
deaths  of  consistently  religious  men,  such  a  phenomenon 
were  too  common  to  be  specially  noted  at  all,  it  would  be 
something  to  the  purpose. 

For  Hume's  skepticism,  charity,  we  think,  may  blame- 
lessly make  ampler  excuse  than  the  generality  of  readers 
have  been  disposed  to  make.  One  may  suspect,  considering 
its  remarkably  early,  uniform,  and  inveterate  character,  that 
it  had  to  do  profoundly  with  the  very  structure  of  his  intel- 

1  Hume  certainly  pronounces  his  own  ^oge  with  suflBcient  confi- 
dence :  "  My  friends,"  says  he  in  his  autobiography,  "  never  had  occa- 
sion to  vindicate  any  one  circumstance  of  my  character  and  conduct." 
If  by  this  he  meant  to  claim  exemption  only  from  flagrant  vice,  there 
are  few  decent  characters  in  life  who  could  not  say  as  much ;  but,  with 
a  deeper  self-knowledge  and  profounder  moral  sensibility,  most  men 
would  own  that  they  were  conscious  of  too  many  failings  which  men 
knew  not,  and  which  God  only  knew,  to  permit  them  to  plume  them- 
selves on  any  such  grounds.  But  of  the  ordinary  infirmities  of  man, 
and  especially  of  the  subtle  spiritual  vices  of  pride,  vainglory,  pre- 
sumption, and  prejudice,  the  biographj'^iud  character  of  Hume  pre- 
sent as  little  lack  as  those  of  other  men. 
34 


398  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

lect,  and  was  ah  origine  far  more  involuntary  than  is  gener- 
ally the  case.  It  may,  in  our  opinion,  be  even  surmised 
that  it  was  connected  with  that  singular  morbid  condition 
from  which  he  suffered  so  much  at  so  early  an  age.  The 
very  curious  document  in  which  he  discloses  so  freely  the 
symptoms  which  oppressed  him  has  been  already  referred 
to,  and  the  brief  citations  we  proposed  to  give  will  be  found 
below ;  but  the  whole  letter,  first  published  in  Burton's  Life 
is  well  worthy  of  perusal  in  extenso.  It  reveals  a  condition 
of  mind,  considering  the  writer's  extreme  youth,  at  least  as 
unhealthy  as  that  of  the  body.  At  an  age  when  other  youths 
are  for  the  most  part  only  too  credulous,  he  was  entertaining 
universal  doubt ;  and  when  others  are  full  of  nothing  but 
poetry  and  love,  he  was  presumptuously  exploring  the  deep- 
est problems  that  can  engage  the  human  intellect,  and  de- 
claring that  nothing  certain  was  yet  established  in  philoso- 
phy or  morals !  At  the  very  time  that  he  was  laboring 
under  the  cloud  of  hypochondriacal  depression,  referred  to 
in  the  letter  from  which  we  give  extracts  below,  he  was  in- 
tensely excogitating  his  philosophy.  His  whole  state  was 
unnatural.^ 

1 "  Every  one  who  is  acquainted  cither  with  the  philosophers  or 
critics  knows  that  there  is  nothing  yet  established  in  either  of  these 
two  sciences,  and  that  they  contain  little  more  than  endless  disputes, 
even  in  the  most  fundamental  articles.  Upon  examination  of  these, 
I  found  a  certain  boldness  of  temper  growing  in  me,  which  was  not 
inclined  to  submit  to  any  authority  in  these  subjects,  but  led  me  to 
seek  out  some  new  medium  by  which  truth  might  be  established. 
After  much  study  and  reflection  on  this,  at  last,  when  I  was  about 
eighteen  years  of  age,  there  seemed  to  be  opened  up  to  me  a  new 
scene  of  thought,  which  transported  me  beyond  measure,  and  made 
rae,  with  an  ardor  natural  to  young  men,  throw  up  every  other  pleas- 
ure or  business  to  apply  entirely  to  it I  was  infinitely  happy 

in  this  course  of  life  for  some  months ;  till  at  last,  about  the  begin- 
ning of  September,  1729,  all  my  ardor  seemed  in  a  moment  to  be 
extinguished,  and  I  could  ^o  longer  raise  my  mind  to  that  pitch 
which  formerly  gave  me  such  excessive  pleasure In  this  con- 
dition I  remained  for  nine  months  very  uneasy  to  myself,  as  you  may 


DAVID    HUME.  399 

At  the  early  age  of  twenty-two  or  twenty-three,  his  phi- 
losophical opinions  were  already  nearly  complete  —  that  is, 

well  imagine,  but  without  growing  any  worse,  which  was  a  miracle. 
....  Though  I  was  sorry  to  find  myself  engaged  with  so  tedious  a 
distemper,  yet  the  knowledge  of  it  set  me  very  much  at  ease,  by  satis- 
fying me  that  my  former  coldness  proceeded  not  from  any  defect  of 
temper  or  genius,  but  from  a  disease  to  which  any  one  may  be  subject. 
....  I  believe  it  is  a  certain  fact,  that  most  of  the  philosophers  who 
have  gone  before  us  have  been  overthrown  by  the  greatness  of  their 
genius,  and  that  little  more  is  required  to  make  a  man  succeed  in 
this  study,  than  to  throw  off  all  prejudices  either  for  his  own  opinions 
or  for  those  of  others.  At  least  this  is  all  I  have  to  depend  on  for 
the  truth  of  my  reasonings,  which  I  have  multiplied  to  such  a  degree, 
that  within  these  three  years  I  find  I  have  scribbled  many  a  quire  of 
paper  in  which  there  is  nothing  contained  but  my  own  inventions. 
This,  with  the  reading  most  of  the  celebrated  books  in  Latin, 
French,  and  English,  and  acquiring  the  Italian,  you  may  think  a  suflS- 
cient  business  for  one  in  perfect  health,  and  so  it  would,  had  it  been 
done  to  any  purpose ;  but  my  disease  was  a  cruel  encumbrance  on 
me.  I  found  that  I  was  not  able  to  follow  out  any  train  of  thought 
by  one  continued  stretch  of  view,  but  by  repeated  interruptions,  and 
by  refreshing  my  eye  from  time  to  time  upon  other  objects.  ...  I 
have  noticed  in  the  writings  of  the  French  mystics,  and  in  those  of 
our  fanatics  here,  that  when  they  give  a  history  of  the  situation  of 
their  souls,  they  mention  a  coldness  and  desertion  of  the  spirit  which 
frequently  returns;  and  some  of  them  at  the  beginning  have  been 
tormented  with  it  many  years.  As  this  kind  of  devotion  depends 
entirely  on  the  force  of  passion,  and  consequently  of  the  animal 
spirits,  I  have  often  thought  that  their  case  and  mine  were  pretty  par- 
allel, and  that  their  rapturous  admirations  might  discompose  the  fab- 
ric of  the  nerves  and  brain  as  much  as  profound  reflections,  and 
that  warmth  of  enthusiasm  which  is  inseparable  from  them. 

"  However  this  may  be,  I  have  not  come  out  of  the  cloud  so  well  as 
they  commonly  tell  us  they  have  done,  or  rather  begin  to  despair  of 

ever  recovering The  questions  I  would  humbly  propose  to 

you  are  :  Whether  among  all  those  scholars  you  have  been  acquainted 
with,  you  have  ever  known  any  affected  in  this  manner  ?  Whether  I 
can  ever  hope  for  a  recovery  1  Whether  I  must  long  wait  for  it  1 
Whether  my  recovery  will  ever  be  perfect,  and  my  spirits  regain  their 
former  spring  and  vigor,  so  as  to  endure  the  fatigue  of  deep  and  ab- 
struse thinking  ■?"—  (Burton,  vol.  i.  p.  31-38.) 


400  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES.' 

when  he  had  hardly  advanced  beyond  boyhood.  His  skep- 
tical tendencies,  —  thus  deeply  radicated,  and  indulged  at 
an  age  so  portentously  early,  —  every  thing  in  his  nature 
tended  to  confirm,  and  nothing  in  his  experience  and  subse- 
quent history  tended  to  correct.  He  was  of  a  naturally 
frigid  temperament,  —  entirely  without  enthusiasm,  —  with 
little  sympathy  for  the  lofty  or  heroic  in  sentiment  or  char- 
acter. Nor,  in  his  after-life  was  there  any  thing  to  develop 
any  latent  germs  of  such  qualities ;  he  never  passed  through 
those  agitating  scenes  of  absorbing  love,  or  joy,  or  sorrow,  or 
hope,  or  fear,  which  form  the  discipline  of  life,  and  so  often 
profoundly  modify,  and  even  revolutionize,  the  human  char- 
acter ;  which  often  develop  qualities  not  suspected  to  exist, 
or  shiver  into  atoms  the  sentiments  and  opinions  formed  in 
youthful  inexperience.  With  only  one  dominant  passion,  as 
he  himself  admits,  —  that  ambition  of  literary  distinction, 
which  tended  rather  to  inflame  than  correct  his  early  love 
of  dazzling  paradox,  —  he  passed  life  in  respectable  epi- 
curean tranquillity.  A  most  commendable  frugality  made 
him  content  in  youth  with  very  little;  he  saw,  as  years 
rolled  on,  increasing  prosperity  in  every  desirable  form,  —  an 
income  which  his  moderation  counted  wealth,  a  steadily  in- 
creasing reputation,  "  troops  of  friends,"  flatteries,  unin- 
terrupted health,  and,  in  a  word,  every  thing  that  could  lay 
to  sleep  (as  prosperity  very  generally  does)  the  suscepti- 
bilities and  emotions  of  man's  spiritual  nature.  His  bark 
sailed  on  a  smooth  sea,  and  encountered  none  of  those  shocks 
or  tempests  which,  more  than  most  things,  make  the  voy- 
ager of  life  consider  whether  his  ship  is  constructed  and 
equipped  as  well  for  the  storm  as  for  the  calm.  It  may  be 
added,  <hat  so  habitually  deficient  is  Hume  in  the  sentiment 
of  veneration,  —  so  unnatural  the  apathy  with  which  he 
regards  religious  phenomena,  —  so  easy,  apparently,  the  en- 
tire extrusion  of  the  subject  from  his  thoughts,  —  so  fright- 
fully contented  does  he  seem  with  his  skepticism,  —  that, 


DAVID    HUME.  401 

though  this  state  of  mind  was  encouraged,  no  doubt,  by  the 
too  congenial  atmosphere  of  his  age,  and  the  French  society 
he  loved,  it  is  difficult  not  to  infer  some  abnormality  in  the 
very  original  structure  of  his  moral  nature ;  and  it  is  the 
kindest  apology  that  can  be  made  for  him. 

On  any  other  hypothesis,  he  cannot  be  too  severely  cen- 
sured for  the  indolent  facility  wjt^i  which  he  seems  to  have 
acquiesced,  in  after-life,  in  his  ffit  early  conclusions  —  the 
very  immaturity  of  which  might  well  have  awakened  sus- 
picion. There  is  no  proof  that,  when  he  became  a  man  in 
intellect,- he  ever  seriously  revolved  them  again.  He  must 
also  be  blamed  for  the  resolute  way  in  which  he  evaded  or 
silenced  every  attempt  to  turn  his  mind  to  the  reconsidera- 
tion of  his  opinions.  A  remarkable  instance  of  this  disposi- 
tion to  get  rid  of  expostulation  occurs  in  one  of  his  letters 
to  Blair,  cited  by  Mr.  Burton :  "  Whenever,"  says  Hume, 
"  I  have  had  the  pleasure  to  be  in  your  company,  if  the  dis- 
course turned  on  any  common  subject  of  hterature  or  rea- 
soning, I  always  parted  from  you  both  entertained  and 
instructed.  But,  when  the  conversation  was  diverted  by 
you  from  this  channel  towards  the  subject  of  your  profes- 
sion —  though  I  doubt  not  but  your  intentions  were  friendly 
towards  me  —  I  own  I  never  received  the  same  satisfaction ; 
I  was  apt  to  be  tired,  and  you  to  be  angry.  I  would  there- 
fore wish,  for  the  future,  whenever  my  good  fortune  throws 
me  in  your  way,  that  these  topics  should  be  forborne  between 
us.  I  have  long  since  done  with  all  inquiries  on  such  sub- 
jects and  hc^e  become  incapable  of  receiving  instruction." 

Blair's  letter,  by  the  way,  shows  that  Hume's  Scottish 
clerical  admirers  did  not  hesitate  to  embrace  opportunities 
of  faithful  expostulation  as  far  as  Hume's  repellent  humor 
permitted,  and  proves  how  unjust  and  uncharitable  the  sus- 
picions which  were  sometimes  founded  on  the  intimacy 
between  him  and  them.  A  man's  Christianity  would  be 
equivocally  evinced  by  renouncing  all  intercourse  with  such 

34* 


402  NEW    BIOGRAPHIES. 

as  renounce  it ;  such  conduct  would  suggest  to  those  thus 
repelled  a  strange  idea  of  the  charity  which  professed  to 
seek  their  spiritual  welfare !  It  were  rather  to  be  desired 
that  every  Hume  or  Gibbon  might  have  for  his  bosom 
friend  a  Bishop  Butler  or  a  Robert  HaU. 

Of  the  personal  and  social  elements  of  Hume's  character 
it  is  unnecessary  to  say^ny  thing,  as  the  subject  has  been 
so  admirably  touched  by  i5ir  James  Mackintosh,  in  his  pre- 
liminary Dissertation.  That  he  was  very  amiable,  and  well 
merited  the  admiration  of  his  friends,  cannot  be  doubted; 
though  the  eulogy  of  Adam  Smith,  uttered  in  the  first  fresh- 
ness of  grief  at  his  loss  is,  as  Sir  James  observes,  "  an  affec- 
tionate exaggeration."  "  Such  a  praise,"  he  justly  says, "  can 
never  be  earned  without  passing  through  either  of  the 
extremes  of  fortune,  without  standing  the  test  of  tempta- 
tions, dangers,  and  sacrifices.  It  may  be  said,  with  truth, 
the  private  character  of  Mr.  Hume  exhibited  all  the  virtues 
which  a  man  of  reputable  station,  under  a  mild  government, 
in  the  quiet  times  of  a  civilized  country,  has  often  the  oppor- 
tunity to  practise." 

In  certain  respects,  Hume  presented  rather  a  curious  con- 
trast. He  was  by  no  means  the  impassive  person  his  gen- 
eral coldness  of  temperament  would  lead  us  to  conclude, 
and  by  no  means  the  unprejudiced  person  which  a  skeptical 
philosophy  may  be  presumed  to  have  a  tendency  to  form, 
and  which  he  would  fain  be  thought.  Where  his  solitary 
passion  —  literary  ambition  —  was  in  question,  his  vanity 
is  as  impatient,  exacting,  and  querulous  as^hat  of  any 
mortal ;  in  spite  of  constantly  brightening  prospects  and 
widening  fame,  he  is  perpetually  harping  about  imaginary 
neglect  and  imaginary  persecution.  Similarly  as  to  preju- 
dice ;  his  bitterness  against   the  English  ^  will  just  match, 

1  Thus  he  speaks  of  the  English  in  1764  :  "  That  nation  are  relaps- 
ing fast  into  the  deepest  stupidity  and  ignorance.  The  taste  for  liter- 
ature is  neither  decayed  nor  depraved  here  as  with  the  barbarians  on 


DAVID    HUME.  403 

and  no  more  than  match,  with  Johnson's  bitterness  against 
the  Scotch.  In  these  two  men,  the  two  nations  may  justly 
consider  themselves  quits  ;  and  fortunately  are  never  likely 
to  have  any  more  such  absurd  accounts  to  settle  between 
them.  It  is  the  happiness  of  our  age  that  Englishmen 
would  as  little  tolerate  the  prejudices  of  Johnson  as  Scotch- 
men would  those  of  Hume.  But  it  is  in  his  historical  writ- 
ings that  Hume's  intense  capacity  of  prejudice  appears  most 
signally.  He  who  was  the  most  skeptical  of  philosophers 
became,  in  fact,  the.  most  bigoted  of  historians ;  with  this 
aggravation  of  his  bigotry,  however,  —  that  all  the  acts  and 
opinions  of  which,  in  his  history,  he  was  so  keen  an  apolo- 
gist, were  in  direct  defiance  of  the  general  strain  of  his 
political  sentiments  and  speculations,  as  disclosed  in  his  Po- 
litical JEssays. 

As  to  his  character  As  a  philosopher,  his  genius  will 
probably  be  more  appreciated,  and  its  achievements  less 
valued,  by  successive  generations  of  readers.  His  capacity 
cannot  be  well  exaggerated.  That  such  a  work  as  the 
Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  or  the  Essays,  should  have  pro- 
ceeded from  so  young  a  man,  gives  an  impression  of  sub- 
tlety, acuteness,  and  ingenuity  seldom,  if  ever,  surpassed. 
But  these  productions  are  chiefly  remarkable  as  proofs  of 
his  genius,  and  for  the  searching  investigations  to  which  they 
led  on  the  part  of  others ;  not  for  their  intrinsic  value. 
System,  as  both  StewSrt  and  Mackintosh  observe,  he  had 
none  ;  he  is  constantly  shifting  his  ground,  and  contradictions 

the  banks  of  the  Thames.  .  .  Can  you  seriously  talk  of  my  continuing 
an  Englishman  ?  Am  I  or  are  you  an  Englishman  1  Do  they  not  treat 
with  derision  our  pretensions  to  that  name,  and  with  hatred  our  just  pre- 
tensions to  surpass  and  govern  them  1  .  .  .(1775)  I  have  a  reluctance 
to  think  of  settling  among  the  factious  barbarians  of  London,  who 
will  hate  me  because  I  am  a  Scotsman,  and  am  not  a  Whig,  and 
despise  me  because  I  am  a  man  of  letters.  .  .  (1776)  It  is  lamentable 
to  think  how  much  that  nation  has  declined  in  literature  in  our  time." 


404  JiEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

without  number  may  be  detected  in  his  writings.  The  fact 
is,  that  provided  he  could  find  any  arguments  to  support  the 
paradox  of  skepticism  which  happened  to  be  the  theme  of 
one  essay,  he  did  not  care  how  it  might  be  opposed  to  some 
other  paradox  of  skepticism  which  was  defended  in  another 
essay.  Thus,  while  speculatively  arguing  that  neither  "  in- 
tuition," "  demonstration,"  "  experience,"  nor  any  other 
conceivable  reason,  really  authorizes  us  to  conclude  that 
any  one  sequence  will  follow  any  one  antecedent  rather  than 
another,  or  that  the  future  will  resemble  the  past,  he,  in  his 
Essay  on  Miracles,  declares  all  "  miracles "  utterly  incred- 
ible,-^ because  they  would  contradict  the  uniformity  of  na- 
ture as  ascertained  by  experience:^  ambitious  to  outdo 
Berkeley  by  annihilating  not  only  matter  but  mind,  and  re- 
ducing every  thing  in  the  universe  to  "  impressions  and 
ideas,"  he  abundantly  contradicts  himself  (but  here,  to  be 
sure,  he  could  not  help  it)  by  saying  in  the  same  breath, 

1  This  inconsistency  with  his  speculative  principles  is  the  least  de- 
fect in  that  acute  but  sophistical  performance.  But  its  fallacies  have 
been  too  often  pointed  out  to  need  being  mentioned  here. 

2  "  For  all  inferences  from  experience  suppose,  as  their  foundation, 
that  the  future  will  resemble  the  past,  and  tliat  similar  powers  will  bo 
conjoined  with  similar  sensible  qualities.  If  there  be  any  suspicion 
that  the  course  of  nature  may  change,  and  that  the  past  may  be  no 
rule  for  the  future,  all  experience  becomes  useless,  and  can  give  rise 
to  no  inference  or  conclusion.  It  is  inlJ)ossible,  therefore,  that  any 
arguments  from  experience  can  prove  this  resemblance  of  the  past  to 
the  future;  since  all  these  arguments  arc  founded  on  the  supposition 
of  that  resemblance.  Let  the  course  of  things  be  allowed  hitherto  ever 
8o  regular,  that  alone,  without  some  new  argument  or  inference, 
proves  not  that  for  the  future  it  will  continiie  so.  In  vain  do  you 
pretend  to  have  learned  the  nature  of  bodies  fi-om  your  past  expe- 
rience." —  (Essays,  vol.  ii..  Sceptical  Doubts).  "  A  wise  man,  therefore, 
proportions  his  belief  to  the  evidence.  In  such  conclusions  as  are 
founded  on  an  infallible  experience,  he  expects  the  event  with  the 
last  degree  of  assurance,  and  regards  his  past  experience  as  full  proof 
of  the  future  existence  of  that  event."  —  {Essays,  vol.  ii.,  Mrades.) 


DAVID    HTTME.  405 

that  of  the  existence  of  these  "  impressions  and  ideas  "  even" 
skepticism  cannot  doubt,  since  we  —  that  is,  the  doubted 
conscious  unity,  Mind  —  cannot  but  be  conscious  of  them  : 
similarly,  while  affirming,  consistently  enough  in  words  all 
his  life  long,  his  belief  in  an  intelligent  First  Cause,  (and  it 
is  the  only  determinate  religious  tenet  which  he  seems  to 
have  maintained,)  nearly  all  his  speculative  reasonings  — 
,  especially  his  theory  of  causation  —  tend  to  show  that  of  that 
pri/nal  truth  there  cannot  be  satisfactory  proof,  and  he  has 
even  furnished  atheism  with  a  novel  paradox  in  its  support, 
founded  on  the  world's  being  a  "  singular  effect : "  indig- 
nantly repelling,  as  a  perversion  of  his  meaning,  the  notion 
that  he  "  had  ever  asserted  so  absurd  a  proposition  as  that 
any  thing  might  arise  without  a  cause,"  he  has  yet  so  ex- 
pressed himself,  that  (as  has  been  well  said  by  one  of  his 
most  acute  critics)  the  entire  metaphysical  world  has  shared 
in  the  mistake !  Magnanimously  declaring  at  one  time  that 
the  philosopher  must  abide  by  truth,  even  though  it  were 
proved  pernicious  to  mankind,  —  quite  in  the  \oity  fiat  jus- 
titia  mat  caelum  style,  —  he,  at  another,  advises  (and  it  is  a 
deep  blot  on  his  character)  a  skeptical  friend  to  accept  church 
preferment,  and  preach  what  he  did  not  believe ;  affirming 
that  "  to  pique  oneself  on  sincerity  in  such  matters  is  to  put 
too  great  a  respect  on  the  vulgar  and  their  superstitions  1 " 
Well  may  one  of  his  most  charitable  critics  proclaim  him- 
self "  ashamed  to  print "  the  philosopher's  words  !  Again, 
while  in  his  Essay  on  Polygamy  and  Divorce  he  sees  so 
clearly  and  illustrates  so  well  the  infinite  importance  of 
preserving  the  domestic  relations  pure,  he  speaks,  in  his 
Inquiry  into  the  Principles  of  Morals,  in  an  apologetic  tone 
of  vices  which,  if  freely  indulged,  would  soon  dissolve  so- 
ciety —  an  inconsistency  which  has  called  forth  the  just 
animadversion  of  Sir  James  Mackintosh. 

In  a  word,  there  is  no  end  to  the  incoherencies  of  Hume's 
statements,  and  which  are  only  concealed  so  long  as  one 


406  NEW  BIOGRAPHIES. 

essay  is  not  collated  with  another.  He  wrote,  as  it  were, 
with  the  old  Roman  stylus  ^b,  sharp  pen  at  one  end,  and  an 
instrument  of  erasure  at  the  other. 

His  fame  as  a  philosopher,  therefore,  will  rest  rather  on 
what  he  was  capable  of  than  of  what  he  achieved ;  and  it 
may  be  said,  by  a  somewhat  similar  paradox,  that  his  fame 
as  an  historian  will  rest  much  more  on  his  manner  than  on 
his  matter.  His  work  is  everywhere  disfigured  with  gross 
defects,  inaccuracies,  and  prejudices,  as  Hallam,  Brodie, 
and  many  others,  have  abundantly  shown ;  but  the  charm 
of  his  style  embalms  and  perfumes  his  errors,  and  men  will 
still  be  willing  to  read  him  —  though  they  disbelieve. 

Not,  indeed,  that  even  his  style  as  an  historian  is  wholly 
free  from  defects.  It  is  cold  —  that  might  be  expected 
from  the  frigid  temperament  of  the  man.  It  is  wanting  in 
imaginativeness  and  consequently  in  animation,  and  the  per- 
fection of  graphic  skill.  This  fault  again  is  often  aggravated 
by  superficial  knowledge  of  his  materials ;  for  a  full  mas- 
tery of  details  is  the  only  thing  which  can  render  precise 
statement  safe.  Thus  Hume  often  omits  names  and  dates 
where  they  ought  to  be  inserted,  and  conceals  the  necessity 
of  definite  statement  in  convenient  vagueness.  His  asser- 
tions are  often  so  general  and  so  adroitly  balanced  and  qual- 
ified, that  they  seem  to  betray  a  consciousness  that  he  is 
standing  on  delicate  ground,  and  that  he  had  better  not 
commit  himself  to  too  much  exactness,  lest  some  critic  of 
greater  knowledge  of  details  should  convict  him  of  inaccu- 
racy. These  artifices  he  employs  no  doubt  with  great  dex- 
terity, but  one  would  greatly  have  preferred  that  there 
should  have  been  no  occasion  for  them.  Still,  in  spite  of  all 
these  deductions,  the  narrative  is  so  lucid,  the  grouping  so 
admirable,  the  reflections  so  unforced  and  natural,  and  the 
style  flows  on  in  such  a  stream  of  tranquil  beauty  —  com- 
bining so  much  of  flexile  grace  and  natural  dignity,  that  his 
work  will  ever  stand  high  in  the  estimate  of  every  culti- 


DAVID    HUME.  407 

vated  taste.  It  is  an  instance  of  the  importance  o^  style,  as  Sir 
J.  Mackintosh  remarked  of  Butler.  That  profound  thinker 
has  been  often  undervalued  for  want  of  a  style  worthy  of 
his  thoughts  ;  the  work  of  Hume,  in  spite  of  his  defects,  has 
been  raised  into  one  of  the  most  familiar  manuals  of  history 
because  it  has  one.  So  senseless  is  that  cry  which  one 
sometimes  hears  —  that  style  is  of  little  consequence,  if  facts 
be  but  stated.  So  little  is  this  to  be  expected  that  though 
Hume's  inaccuracies  have  been  exposed  a  thousand  times 
he  still  maintains,  in  virtue  of  his  style  alone,  the  place  of  a 
classic  of  English  history. 

The  same  qualities  of  style,  are,  if  possible,  more  manifest 
in  Hume's  Philosophical  Essays.  Amidst  that  absence  of 
all  generous  enthusiasm  which  we  should  expect  in  so  com- 
plete a  Pyrrhonist,  and  a  prodigal  use  of  subtle  and  ingen- 
ious sophistry  that  would  seem  to  have  had  no  other  object 
than  to  confound  and  perplex  the  intellect  of  the  reader, 
they  abound  in  passages  which,  considered  simply  as  com- 
position, are  exquisite  specimens  of  refined  simplicity  —  of 
that  severe  attic  grace  which  it  is  evident  he  had  carefully 
studied  and  cultivated,  as  well  as  of  a  very  quiet  but  most 
elegant  pleasantry.  And  amongst  such  passages  few  "are 
more  striking  than  those  in  which  the  sceptic  acknowledges 
the  vanity  of  skepticism.* 

1  Nothing  can  be  happier  than  the  pleasantry  in  some  of  Hume's 
familiar  letters,  and  it  makes  us  regret  that  we  have  not  more  of 
them.  We  would  willingly  exchange  for  them  portions  either  of  his 
Essays  or  his  History,  bulk  for  bulk.  Light  and  trivial  in  comparison 
no  doubt  they  would  be,  but  one  might  find  consolation  in  thinking 
that  elegant  triviality  was  at  least  as  good  as  grave  error  or  pernicious 
paradox.  How  graceful  is  the  following  badinage:  —  "I  live  still, 
and  must  for  a  twelvemonth,  in  my  old  house  in  St.  James's  Court, 
which  is  very  cheerful,  and  even  elegant,  but  too  small  to  display  my 
great  talent  for  cookery  —  the  science  to  which  I  intend  to  addict  the 
remaining  years  of  my  life  !  I  have  just  now  lying  on  the  tabic  before 
me  a  receipt  for  making  soupe  a  la  reine,  copied  witii  my  own  hand. 


408  NEW   BIOGRAPHIES. 

The  fullest  and  most  authentic  account  of  Hume's  Life 
and  Writings  will  be  found  in  Burton's  recent  Life,  to 
which  we  willingly  confess  our  obligations. 

For  beef  and  cabbage  (a  charming  dish,)  and  old  mutton,  and  old 
claret,  nobody  excels  me.  I  make  also  sheep's  head  broth,  in  a  man- 
ner that  Mr.  Keith  speaks  of  it  for  eight  days  after ;  and  the  Due 
de  Nivernois  would  bind  himself  apprentice  to  my  lass  to  learn  it !  I 
have  already  sent  a  challenge  to  David  Moncrief ;  you  will  see  that  in 
a  twelvemonth  he  will  take  to  the  writing  of  history  (the  field  I  have 
deserted),  for,  as  to  giving  of  dinners,  he  can  now  have  no  further 
pretensions.  I  should  have  made  a  very  bad  use  of  my  abode  in 
Paris,  if  I  could  not  get  the  better  of  a  mere  provincial  like  him." 


\ 


14  DAY  USE 

LETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

OQ  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


3Ma)r'S3ilft 


^^Af?      S  ir)^3 


JUN     8  198Q 

m.  CIR.     MAY  2  0    198C 


MRU4 


»A\JTO.oisc,jysR'a4'87 


LD  21A-50w-ll,'62 
(D3279slO)476B 


GENERAL  LIBRARY -U.C.  BERKELEY 


BDooaaam? 


II 


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